One-Way or Two-Way Links?
As is well known, the Web was conceptualized as a way to be able to share and access information in academic circles. Founder Tim Berners-Lee wanted it to go a step further, writes Walter Isaacson in Innovators . He didn’t want just a data management system; rather, he wanted a collaborative playground. Ergo, Berners-Lee came up with the famous “hypertext”, those links when clicked take you to the other document or site, without worrying about which hardware or OS or anything else it ran on! Tech visionary, Ted Nelson, had visualized something similar in the 1960’s, except that Nelson wanted the links to be two-way for these reasons: 1) It would allow navigation in both directions (linker to linkee and vice-versa); 2) It would force links to be approved by both sides (linker and linkee). This provision would avoid the all too common problem we often face today: broken links; 3) Lastly, it woul...