A justification for “seenthis”:
World Wide Wasteland | Zemanta BlogZemanta Blog
►http://www.zemanta.com/blog/world-wide-wasteland
There are no more links
The anchor tag is still with us!
But it’s only used to get people from one part of a website to another part. Well, most websites are one-page apps anyway … due to something about cross-device compatibility.
But external linking is completely dead.
A long time ago, back in the day, a hyperlink was almost magical. It was the science fiction of Ted Nelson’s “Dream Machines” — or even Gibson’s “Neuromancer” brought to life. I could go from one machine (with its store of knowledge and information) to another (with a completely different focus and purpose). Either (or both) could be on the other side of the world! What could possibly be more awesome than that?
However, the idea and concept of “Search Engine Optimization” and other games to play with Google has subverted the original purpose of links to connect related information into increasing the apparent reputation of sites that have nothing useful to say. The links are created by machines, pretending to be human. In turn, they are read by other machines, also pretending to be human.
All these machines pretending to be human — I’ve wondered recently if true human-like artificial intelligence is most likely to arise from a sufficiently complex spam filter.