The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, eds. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008. 319 pp.
It was in 2006 when a New York Times Magazine piece suggested that the hyperlink may be one of the most important inventions of the past fifty years. Yes, that humble little link that helps people move around the Internet at lightning speed was just as important as the Internet itself. Maybe even more important. After all, what good would the Internet be if people could not move around it? If people had to put in computer codes every time they wanted to go somewhere, the whole thing would slow to a crawl. In fact, links are such an important part of the Internet that most people would scarcely recognize that a link is something different from the Internet.
Links are something different. Also, they are relatively new. That is despite the fact that people for centuries have been seeking ways to connect information. Indexes have been around as long as humans have been writing books. Footnotes and endnotes have existed for centuries. Libraries would essentially be useless without a system for finding all the stuff on the shelves. So links may be new, but their ancestors are not.
In this information age when people are bombarded with data on a minute-by-minute basis, it is the links that help us navigate through the flood out there in the world. It is no wonder, then, that the humble link has become the subject of scholarly research. The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age is one attempt at understanding the importance of links. The book is derived from papers presented at a conference of the same name conducted in June 2006 at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, where the co-editors are an associate dean and a doctoral student, respectively. The goal of the conference was to bring together different kinds of scholars to consider the role that links play in people’s lives. These were not just experts in computer science, but rather people engaged in everything from cartography to entertainment blogs. What brought them all together was the humble little hyperlink.
The most interesting part of the book is the vast array of things that most people take for granted. The link is not just connecting information; it is also becoming something in and of itself. When a link is created, there is an understanding of acceptance. A Web page is relevant and important when someone links to it. The more people who link to a Web page, the more legitimacy it has. After all, most search engines such as Google use links to rank Web sites. Links are the connections that establish that one Web page as better or more important than another. If there are links to a site, it is ranked as more popular. But popularity does not equal authority. Links are not neutral; they can be good or bad. There is a certain morality in links. If we link to something else, we are vouching for its veracity.
Consider how even mapmakers use links these days. Maps are no longer static descriptions, but rather interactive things that bring the users of the maps together with the mapmakers. The links provide an opportunity for a map to be a fluid and ever-changing thing. In entertainment, links are a critical part of establishing the celebrity culture. People linking to a celebrity’s Web site or Twitter postings are a measure of popularity and interest. Links also have changed the way the world does business. Old-style advertising was a one-way form of communication, but the use of links allows companies to talk directly to individual consumers, and the consumers can talk right back about products and services.
Links may be wonderful things, but they have a dark side as well. A link takes people only to where the link creator wanted the reader to go. Links in many ways fragment society because linking is not so universal. Conservatives link to other conservatives, and the liberals do the same. While it is true that everyone links to the New York Times, one essay in this book offers an interesting look at how often political blogs rarely link to opposing points of view, even just to point out the differences. So in many ways, links may be serving to tear society apart rather than bringing it together. That contradicts the general belief that links open up a world of different ideas to society.
What is most striking about The Hyperlinked Society is how much fodder there is for future examination of our friend the lowly link. By considering the link as something more than just a Web site address that takes a person to another place on the Web, it opens up a world of new possibilities. People are linking Web pages now, but what can they link next? Can people’s thoughts be linked to the thoughts of others? Can people themselves be linked to others like themselves? These essays do not take the possibilities that far, but future researchers sure may be willing to go that direction. And why keep the focus just on links? That 2006 New York Times Magazine article also speculates that the humble “tag” on Web pages might be the other most important invention in fifty years. The Tagged Society cannot be far behind.
THOMAS J. HRACH
University of Memphis