HypertextSickness

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Sick with gorging on information. Sick with the possibilities of the internet. Choking on links. Stomach bloated with undigested links.

Hypertext (or wiki) seems to offer a chance to have everything at once. It's so tantalizingly close. The mastery of the information. The network that connects you to millions. The possibilities that could be opened up if you could just make those links work. If that energy could just be co-ordinated. If that knowledge could just be organized and applied ...

And surely, hypertext does capture it, and puts you back in control? Doesn't it? You know is does. Or will, as soon as you have proper tools. Surely linking those ideas, those people, is as simple as dreaming about it?

Surely ...

Increasingly I'm thinking about ConspiracyThinkingAsWikiSickness ConspiracyTheories proliferate because we are intoxicated by the sense of discovering deep truths by jumping to connections based on the scrappiest evidence.

Are our tools for hyperlinking exacerbating this?

IsThoughtStormsOptimisticOrPessimistic?

Some days I feel like I'm trying to re-write the Internet. Minus the CatPictures (and damn baseball stories)... –BillSeitz

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