Autonomy in the wiki sense does not mean independence from others — it means completeness within oneself. A page is a self-contained unit, a Monad in the TiddlyWiki sense: it carries all that it needs to be itself. Text, data, images, scripts — all belong to the same orbit, bundled together so the page can travel freely across the federation.
# Loose Coupling Autonomous pages depend on loose data coupling. When a visualisation draws from a dataset, it keeps a local snapshot — a momentary copy of the truth as it once was. The page remembers what it saw, even as the original data drifts away.
This act of embedding — of storing a little data alongside the idea — ensures resilience. A forked copy still renders its chart. A remixed version still tells its story. The connection to the source becomes optional, not essential.
# The Nature of Autonomy
Autonomy is not isolation. Pages communicate through links, share ancestry, and form constellations of meaning. Yet each remains portable and self-sufficient, able to survive outside the network that gave it life.
When you fork a page, you do not just copy its words — you inherit its logic, its embedded data, its identity. That inheritance allows new stories to emerge without depending on the original host.
# Implications
For authors, autonomy changes the rhythm of creation. We can work offline, experiment locally, and publish later. We can fork with confidence, knowing that each page will continue to function wherever it lands.
For coders, it means designing tools that respect encapsulation. The page is not an entry in a database, but a living bundle — an executable document that travels as a single, coherent thing.
# Towards a Network of Monads If each page is autonomous, the federation becomes a society of peers. Pages can migrate, collaborate, or evolve — but none are bound by a single origin. Together they form a network of small, complete worlds that converse through links and history.
Autonomy is the quiet strength of this system: the assurance that knowledge, once written, can move freely — and still remember who it is.
# See