Before the World Wide Web, information was separate and only connected as efficiently as the quickest route to the library or wherever the information referred to was being held. You went to the information.
With the web and links, the information comes to you.
“The Web was designed to be a universal space of information, so when you make a bookmark or a hypertext link, you should be able to make that link to absolutely any piece of information that can be accessed using networks. ” TBL w3.org
links? addresses?
Web links are curious things, they are actually addresses but they are called links. This is not just semantics, it’s important: A link has two ends, hence it links two things (or more). But web links only have one end, and that end is an address saying ‘go to this computer and this directory and that file’. That is an address, a pointer. The file pointed to doesn’t even need to exist.
how links work
Web links are conceptually simple. People got it. And we have a true world wide web as a result - of course, HTML in general, the way to mark-up the layout of pages and HTTP, the way the information would be exchanged, mattered - but the link was the main interactive mechanism.
If someone wrote a document and wanted to allow the reader a quick way to go to a different page, all it required the author to do was to get the address, like http://www.apple.com and insert it as a link, or pointer, around the text that should act as the way to get to http://www.apple.com.
A clear innovation. It changed our world.
limitations of links
But links required the author to know what links would be useful to the reader and it did not allow the reader to create links or connections on the fly.
The reader was forced to follow the links, or spend time copying text, going to other sites, such as search engines or dictionaries and pasting the text, then waiting for the results.
Additionally, once the author decides to make a link, the author can only make the link go to one place. The author cannot make the link go to multiple destinations. For example, a link to a politicians name, should that go to the official page for that politician, to a page on voter records, or maybe to news about the politician?
a different perspective
Instead of making a few words special and interactive, instead of making the author have to decide on all the useful navigation options, why not make all the words interactive?
Instead of special hyperlinks, why not also have all the word become (for want of a better name) ‘hyperwords’?
an approach
Hyperwords would allow users to interact with any text in many ways. For example, select text and search the web, search for people or search for information about the page they are viewing.
Or look up references like Wikipedia, dictionaries and so on. This could be considered ‘implicit’ links - a word is always implicitly linked to its entry in the dictionary for example.
Other interactions could be useful, such as printing, blogging about, tagging or emailing a chunk of text, complete with attribution, quickly and easily, with a single click.
Different dimensions of the text should be accessible, such as the map of a place, perhaps even the local time right now and the temperature. Why not?
How about translations, of full pages or or single words or snippets of text, why can that not be within a the reach of a single click, as quick as a pre-made, hand-made link?
Other commands, like shopping should also be available. And many more than I can think of.
Why should the world wide web be limited to the authors simple links? Why should it be limited to software designers browser controls?
For that matter, why should it be limited to the imagination of the designers of the extension designed to make Hyperwords real?
a future
There should be no artificial limit. Which is why we are doing three things: implementing user suggestions as quickly as we can, adding customizability and developing an extensible framework to be able to include all kinds of things we can’t even think off.
Please email me comments at frode@hyperwords.net. Or blog about it. I’m using iWeb and it doesn’t feature comments yet. Besides, this Technorati search will show all blogs discussing Hyperwords.
But please try Hyperwords first by downloading it from hyperwords.net before you send any major comments - this is no longer just an academic exercise, a fun thought, it’s a utility you can use everyday. It currently lives as a Firefox & Flock Extension.
Frode Hegland
Starbucks,
Mountain View, (I think)
NOTE, added 28th of Feb: I am not arguing against links, which are clearly very important and useful, I am simply saying we should have other interaction opportunities in addition to links.