This! Is! My! Shit! (by which I mean enthusiasm, not ownership)

I’ve written about these ideas before, so I’ll try not to repeat what I’ve said there.

A quick objection.

[T]here’s a limit to the effectiveness of the knowledge network as a reading experience. “Hypertext books,” online books which are made up of an abundance of interlinked HTML pages, are mostly unpopular.

The default answer for anything you might want to search on the internet is probably found in a book of interlinked HTML pages that we call Wikipedia.

So what is the difference here?

People do a lot of reading of wiki hypertext, but they don’t read it linearly, and they don’t read to completion. Does the first imply the second? If linear reading means going from top to bottom, what are the patterns of increasing engagement with non-linear text? (Somehow I feel like increased ability to make connections is in the answer)

Technically, I find it frustrating that a predefined anchor is necessary. I recognize, however, that a better fix would probably require git diff levels of analysis to determine “of the stuff on this page, what section is probably what you meant to link to?” Is it necessary that we all use outliners to chunk up our content a la Roam to facilitate these deeper links?

And of course I will never be satisfied until we are transcluding each other’s websites, not our own, but that’s a small detail. ;)