Links: The ‘Opposite of Information’
by Joe McKendrick
Links are more than those underscored words that fall in the middle of pages, and essentially say, ‘Okay, time to leave and go somewhere else.’
In his keynote at FastForward ‘08, David Weinberger took a close look at this phenomenon we’ve all become very used to, the link, and dissected what it all means for the way we view information.
In the good old days we called them hyperlinks, a very hyper-techy-sounding word for something that is ultimately very human-driven.
Of course, David spoke about much, much more than links. Bill Ives provides some perspective on David’s talk, here, and Jerry Michalski spoke to David in an onsite interview, posted here.
We’ve reached a stage in which “all contents are also connections,” David said. “Everything leads to everything else.” He added that unlike the structured approach to information retention we’ve grown accustomed to in enterprises (think relational databases), links are a very human interaction. “Links are the opposite of information,” he said. “Links are messy, personal, and one-way.” In other words, links are purely user controlled, part of the “unowned order.” And, in a way, adding soul to the soul-less machine.
Such is the progression we’re also seeing with the growth of the Web, and in the collaborative, Enterprise 2.0 communities and tools we are seeing. There is no owner; because we are all the owners.
