4 ms·

"Links suck." I hope the irony of posting this on a web site that mostly links to other sites is not lost on anyone. All forms of communication entail comprom

"Links suck." I hope the irony of posting this on a web site that mostly links to other sites is not lost on anyone. All forms of communication entail compromises - who has control, how persistent they are, how easy they are to access. If you own a book, you know it won't disappear - but you also have to move it around with you, and it's never going to get updated unless you buy a new one. The alternative to linking is to have a hugely denormalized web where owners don't control their own content, have no way to update it and little incentive to publish it. (I believe we called those "CD ROMs" back in the day.) Yes, some web sites disappear if there is so little interest in their content that it's not worth maintaining them. But it's still better than books, where if interest was limited, it probably never got published in the first place.

mechanical_fish 15y ago
The irony is certainly not lost on me. I don't think the CD-ROM metaphor is useful. CD-ROMs are dead as a medium. Arguing against them is a straw man. It's not going to be 1990 again no matter how much anyone might wish it. The actual modern alternative to links is: Copying everything. Just cache it all. Every time you follow a link, you copy whatever you read or view at the other end and store it forever. Keeping the link as well is fine -- it's very useful metadata -- but what you really want is the content, and you'll keep that forever. Lend it to your friends by bumping iPhones with them, or something. This is astonishingly practical: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_the_future.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_... I already own the storage devices that would hold every written word I have ever read or will ever read in my life. [1] Within another decade or two I'll be able to buy a storage device that would hold a video stream of everything I'll ever see. And once we all start archiving everything in our pockets we will almost certainly end up with a "hugely denormalized" system. I like that. We call that "individuality". I don't really want to live in a hive mind. I like my mind, and I don't always like other people's minds. It's an advantage to have a mind of your own. How else would I be able to conduct whimsical flights of fancy like this one? --- [1] Let's see: Claimed world record for speed reading: Anne Jones with 4,700 words per minute with 67% comprehension. average length of an English word: about 5 letters. Five bytes. 24 hours of reading at 4700 wpm: 1.9 GB, uncompressed; one year of reading, no sleep: 691 GB; one hundred years of reading 12 hours per day at maximum speed: 34TB; compression ratio of roughly 7 to 1 (see http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/text.php http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/text.php): 4.9TB. I've got that sitting on the desk in front of me.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

The irony is certainly not lost on me. I don't think the CD-ROM metaphor is useful. CD-ROMs are dead as a medium. Arguing against them is a straw man. It's not going to be 1990 again no matter how much anyone might wish it. The actual modern alternative to links is: Copying everything. Just cache it all. Every time you follow a link, you copy whatever you read or view at the other end and store it forever. Keeping the link as well is fine -- it's very useful metadata -- but what you really want is the content, and you'll keep that forever. Lend it to your friends by bumping iPhones with them, or something. This is astonishingly practical: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_the_future.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/05/shaping_... I already own the storage devices that would hold every written word I have ever read or will ever read in my life. [1] Within another decade or two I'll be able to buy a storage device that would hold a video stream of everything I'll ever see. And once we all start archiving everything in our pockets we will almost certainly end up with a "hugely denormalized" system. I like that. We call that "individuality". I don't really want to live in a hive mind. I like my mind, and I don't always like other people's minds. It's an advantage to have a mind of your own. How else would I be able to conduct whimsical flights of fancy like this one? --- [1] Let's see: Claimed world record for speed reading: Anne Jones with 4,700 words per minute with 67% comprehension. average length of an English word: about 5 letters. Five bytes. 24 hours of reading at 4700 wpm: 1.9 GB, uncompressed; one year of reading, no sleep: 691 GB; one hundred years of reading 12 hours per day at maximum speed: 34TB; compression ratio of roughly 7 to 1 (see http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/text.php http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/text.php): 4.9TB. I've got that sitting on the desk in front of me.