The Death of the Link Economy

Nick Carr, in pimping his new book (which I clearly should not link to ), argues that Links are Bad Things:

Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they're also distractions. Sometimes, they're big distractions - we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we've forgotten what we'd started out to do or to read. Other times, they're tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don't click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it's there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension.

Nick argues that he doesn't want to over-egg the cognitive load of linking, and then goes on to do just that....

The link is, in a way, a technologically advanced form of a footnote. It's also, distraction-wise, a more violent form of a footnote. Where a footnote gives your brain a gentle nudge, the link gives it a yank. What's good about a link - its propulsive force - is also what's bad about it.

So is this the death of the Web 2.0 stalwart, the Link Economy? No, that was dead already along with all the other FreeConomic cr*p that was in the same memeset and died when capital funding dried up (unless you link to an in-text Ad of course....). As I point out in the graphic above, your view on linking is a function on how badly you think you need them. To me this is just a maturity/familiarity thing - I don't charge all over the web when I read a piece, just as I don't keep on going to the back of a book to read the footnotes. One suggested approach is actually to group all links and stick them at the end of one's post, simulating the notes at the back of a book:

Collecting all the URLs into a single block of text at the end of the article works very well. It illustrates Carr's point, and it improves the experience of reading the article. It also shows more respect for the reader - it assumes that we've actually thought about what we've read. (Which is not to say that all readers merit that level of respect.)

The big question of course, is do I link to Nick's post - of course, but maybe I should do it a the end of my piece as suggested, so here it is. Here too is Stowe Boyd's argument that its just a case of learning to read online media to maximise flow