The Post-Digital Perma-Library : Cultivating Ecosystems of Cosmogonic Knowledge

Jones, Nathan (2025) The Post-Digital Perma-Library : Cultivating Ecosystems of Cosmogonic Knowledge. In: BiblioTech : ReReading the Postdigital Library. Torque Editions, pp. 277-280. ISBN 9780993248788

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of the post-digital perma-library as an artistic and philosophical response to the limitations of current hybrid library models and extractive knowledge infrastructures. Arising from the BiblioTech project, the perma-library offers a speculative, evolving framework for libraries as ecosystems of cosmogonic knowledge—repositories not only of data but of affect, memory, magic, and collective imagination. Blending insights from post-digital art, open-source cultures, and permaculture principles, the chapter proposes libraries as participatory, self-writing environments that reconfigure the relationship between readers, texts, technologies, and infrastructures. It explores topics including humanterfaces, shadow libraries, AI-human collaboration, and the stacking of cognitive, social, and environmental functions. Refusing proprietary systems and extractive logics, the perma-library becomes a resonant space for emergent, interdependent knowledge practices—living, adaptive, and committed to reimagining the future of intellectual and cultural life.