[jake-low]

Fascinating read.

Nelson’s ideas of an open universal hypertext system is in many was incredibly prescient of our modern web. But one thing he (and others) got wrong(1) is the concept of backlinks: the ability of a user to see, for any page, a list of other pages (including those by other authors) which link to it.

It’s hard for me to imagine what the web of today would look like with this feature. Ignoring the (probably insurmountable) technical problems, I wonder what would happen if backlinks became available to web users today. How would it change the way we interact with and design websites?

(1): perhaps “foresaw differently” is more charitable since Nelson acknowledges that many systems do not include the feature and is arguing that the system of the future should.

[DonHopkins]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Webmenti...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Pingback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Linkback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Refback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Trackbac...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvFjtKPNfNE

[pjc50]

The early 2000s blog community invented "trackback" for that purpose, but what Nelson didn't forsee was the inevitable problem of a truly open system: spam and other abuse.

[Firadeoclus]

Indeed, what is possible to do in a private or moderated/curated web is quite different from the limits of an open web.

[fulafel]

The built in micropayments would have changed the abuse landscape and need for ads/spam in general.

[chrisweekly]

Graph-based codexes like RoamResearch.com show just how powerful such back-references can be.