The Original Idea
The earliest version of the Info Sprawlings was built around a simple, enormous impulse: whenever I encountered something interesting, I wanted a place to research it, explain it, and connect it to everything else I knew.
The possible subjects were intentionally almost unlimited. A page might focus on a scientist, actor, philosopher, religion, fictional superpower, animal, organism, place, symbol, technology, psychological idea, or concept from cognitive science. I imagined the collection growing outward as new interests appeared, with links allowing one subject to lead naturally into another.
Even before it was a website, the idea was larger than a collection of essays. I wanted a reusable system of knowledge: individual explanations with recognizable homes, meaningful categories, and relationships that could eventually support other projects.
The Google Drive Years
I first attempted to build the Info Sprawlings through Google Drive. Nested folders acted as categories, Word documents acted as future pages, and separate lists held possible subjects to research. Some documents became substantial collections of notes and sources; others remained templates, headings, reminders, or little more than a title waiting to be developed.
The archive already showed the connective instinct behind the project. Notes linked people to concepts, subjects to examples, and ideas to related ideas: for example, Anton Chekhov to the narrative principle known as Chekhov’s gun. But the archive should not be mistaken for a finished encyclopedia. It was a semi-extensive early taxonomy containing both real research and a great deal of unfinished scaffolding.
Knowledge Corp and Mayvene
For a time, I grouped the Info Sprawlings and Mayvene beneath an umbrella idea I called Knowledge Corp. The Info Sprawlings would organize and explain connected subjects; Mayvene would center questions, answers, and the exchange of knowledge. Together, they suggested the beginning of a broader knowledge and information ecosystem.
Knowledge Corp was an early organizing concept, not an established company. Still, it captured an ambition that continues to matter: knowledge should be structured so that it can be discovered, connected, reused, and applied in more than one place.
The “Glorified Wikipedia” Problem
At some point, someone described the Info Sprawlings back to me as a “glorified Wikipedia”. The phrase was discouraging because it made the entire idea feel redundant. Wikipedia already covered an extraordinary range of subjects through a mature public encyclopedia; recreating that breadth alone would not explain why another version needed to exist.
However, the criticism did not prove that the underlying impulse was worthless. It exposed that I had not yet given the project enough shape. I knew what I wanted to collect, but not what I would deliberately leave out; I understood breadth, but not yet voice, scope, or sustainability. My motivation faded, and the archive sat mostly untouched for several years.
What Changed
Reviving the Info Sprawlings did not mean returning to the original plan unchanged. The newer version keeps the interconnected knowledge at its core while giving the project clearer boundaries and a more personal reason to exist.
| Earlier vision | Revived approach |
|---|---|
| Attempt to cover almost everything | Select subjects I genuinely want to explore |
| Breadth as the main ambition | Context, usefulness, and connections first |
| Private folders and documents | Public pages with canonical URLs |
| Informal categories and cross-links | Structured topics, aliases, relationships, and JSON |
| A mostly separate knowledge archive | Links to my writings, projects, and wider site |
| An encyclopedia-sized destination | A living knowledge web that can grow at a sustainable pace |
The Info Sprawlings Today
The present version lives within Aaron Schlossberg’s Universe. Each Info Sprawling has a full HTML article and a structured JSON record that can describe its title, aliases, topics, relationships, related terms, related writings, and other reusable information. A generated search index makes the collection searchable across both metadata and complete article text.
Publishing the collection also makes this research publicly accessible and discoverable instead of leaving it buried in private folders. That discoverability is a benefit of making useful work available.
Selective articles
A subject earns a page because I have a real reason to research, explain, or connect it.
Structured knowledge
JSON records keep important relationships reusable beyond the prose of a single page.
Search and discovery
Readers can search titles, topics, aliases, headings, relationships, and full article text.
Connections outward
Knowledge pages can connect directly to writings, creative work, software, and other projects.
Where The Info Sprawlings Could Go
The Info Sprawlings may remain a section of this website, eventually move to its own website or subdomain, become part of Mayvene, or contribute to a renewed version of the larger Knowledge Corp idea. Its structured content is designed to leave those possibilities open without requiring any of them now.
The immediate goal is simpler: keep publishing worthwhile pages, improve the relationships among them, and let the collection’s identity emerge through the knowledge it actually contains.
From the Original Archive
The original archive is valuable as a record of how the project was first imagined, but it also contains raw notes, partial templates, outdated material, unfinished research, and documents that were never intended to stand as completed public work. For that reason, I am not publishing the full archive as though it were a finished encyclopedia.
A future archival edition
I may add a curated PDF containing an early concept document, selected folder screenshots, excerpts from the original topic queues, and a short editorial note. It would be presented as a historical artifact; not as a current specification or a complete description of the Info Sprawlings today.