Article on Religion and Hyperlinks

Interesting thoughts in this article from '96 on the early days of the Internet and religion.

The author complains at one point about how hyperlinks interrupt ordinary texts and annoy hom, but may be appropriate to religious texts which ask for detailed study and not simply reading. Words in sacred texts, he observe, already have multiple layers of meaning and bring different things together "a text is considered sacred partly because it succeeds in creating connections, unifying experience."

While I agree with the creating connections aspect, I don't think hyperlinks can do anything like what sacred text can do yet. A hyperlink can only go one place. A single sacred word may go thousands of places.