Part 3: Hyperlinks, the Individual and the Social
Preface to Part 3
The essays in this section explore what it means to live in a hyperlinked society, a world where individuals and information are increasingly connected and linked to each other. In a philosophical essay, David Weinberger makes a strong case for the morality of links. Links are good, he says, because they allow us to share the existence of others and their ideas. However, whether we decide to use the hyperlink for good or bad will be ultimately up to us. The other essays in this section explore the ways links connect people to each other and the social implications of those connections.
Stefaan Verhulst relates linking to the future of mapmaking. He notes that maps help us make sense of the world, much as links do, and that it is dangerous to take both for granted. Mapmaking, he says, is a process that has inherent biases and power structures that we need to question, particularly because maps mediate the ways we experience reality. New tools, such as Google Earth, that create maps by linking to databases that use information from the Web can lead to positive and negative developments for society.
Jeremy Crampton is more positive than Verhulst about the possibilities the democratization of mapping will bring. Whereas maps were once the exclusive domain of an elite few, advances in technology and open standards have allowed many more people to produce, combine, and contribute maps. What is new about the tools now used is that they often rely on open standards and make use of widely distributed data sets. This allows for what has come to be known as “map mashups”—the act of collaboratively linking data to create new maps. With the linked technology now available to the wider public, maps are increasingly being made and used by grassroots organizations for advocacy purposes.
In her essay, Lada Adamic considers different faces of the hyperlink. Hyperlinks often reveal communities that are created on the basis of shared interests. She finds, for example, that niche hobbies are good predictors of relationships. Adamic also finds that the same is true in the commercial space: niche products enjoy the highest success of being propagated. In addition, Adamic looks at the hyperlink's role in creating political communities and finds important relationships between political preference and the connections blogs make to one another.
The final two essays of the book continue to explore the implications a hyperlinked society has for political democracy. Markus Prior examines whether hyperlinks are “weak ties.” Weak ties, a concept borrowed from social networks, are relationships that reduce social fragmentation because they allow diverse groups to connect to each other. However, while access to a diversity of information is greater than ever, ironically there are signs that an increase in the choices we have in the media actually leads to higher levels of political fragmentation. Matthew Hindman takes another tack to exploring the implications of a hyperlinked society for the public sphere. Whereas some writers, such as Yochai Benkler, argue that the Internet has lead to a wider public sphere, Hindman argues that this is not necessarily the case. He challenges the “trickle-up theory” of blog inclusiveness and brings data to show that only a handful of voices receive a disproportionate amount of attention.
Hindman's essay opens up more questions than it answers, and that is a fitting end to this volume. The hyperlink and the technologies that enable it are only in their infancy. While the writers in this book point to many avenues into which links will take society in the years to come, there will undoubtedly be enormous surprises. Even more important than their prognostications, however, are the questions and perspectives the essayists present. We hope that these provocative ideas will transcend technologies to ignite important streams of discussion and research about hyperlinking and society for years to come.