The Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the internet. Invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, it was designed to share information across incompatible computer systems.

The hypertext vision

Berners-Lee built on a longer lineage. Vannevar Bush imagined the “memex” in 1945 — a device for associative linking of documents. Ted Nelson coined “hypertext” in the 1960s and envisioned a global document system called Xanadu.

The web realized a version of this vision: documents linking to documents, forming a web of knowledge.

Digital gardens and the web

This site is itself an implementation of the digital garden philosophy — a personal hyperlinked knowledge base, echoing the web’s original spirit.

The web was always a garden: you follow links, discover unexpected connections, tend your own corner. The rise of social media replaced this with feeds, but the garden persists.

The web and language models

Language Models were trained primarily on web content. The web is the substrate from which AI learned to mimic human language and reasoning.

This creates a strange loop: the web created the conditions for AI, and AI now generates content that flows back onto the web.