Hyperlinks of Faith

They were first known as embedded menus during the infancy of the computer age. Like keys to a door that leads to other doors, they became known as hyperlinks on the internet. And with a little imagination, we can find them in today’s reading.

At first, they were called “embedded menus.”

The invention of these menus occurred before any of us had even heard of something called the internet or the World Wide Web. It happened in the dark ages of computer technology, a primeval era in which computers were still large by today’s standards, and data storage was pitifully small.

Ben Shneiderman, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland and the inventor of the embedded menu, quickly gave these menus a new name: hyperlinks. It caught on, and without them, researchers, librarians, grad students, parents and countless others in every occupation would be floundering and perhaps still looking for help in the venerable Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature.

It’s hard to imagine life without hyperlinks. Yet this is what Gary Klein, Ph.D., senior scientist at MacroCognition LLC, tries to do. In a recent article in Psychology Today, he attempts to picture our world without these digital...