The #ADD Generation & The Endless Footnote
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @TheKerp
It’s no revelation that web browsing is spastic behavior. A site only has seconds to grab you, and if it does the average time spent on any given website is something like 3-5 minutes before some other link pulls you away. That’s how the web works (understanding this has made Google a shit-ton of money.) I was talking web-browsing habits with a client the other day when the phrase “The Endless Footnote” popped into my head, and holy crap is that exactly what the internet is.
Anyone who’s ever read “Infinite Jest” or, well, a textbook, like, ever, has been through the footnote game. A little number appears above whatever you just read, and you’ve gotta check out the bottom of the page, or in some cases check out the back of the book for whatever explanation the author saw fit to include there. It’s the print version of a hyperlink. With a book you flip back to wherever you were when you ran into the footnote. This is where the internet just blows up into madness, because every footnote has it’s own footnotes, and they have their own footnotes and after a little while you’ve totally lost track of which book you started in. It’s awesome in that there is generally some kind of linking relevance. A good session browsing the web is a scatter-shot look at incredibly huge amounts of information with some sort of loose thematic link. It’s crazy! We’re slowly building a massive database of information that is literally linked together like neurons on the brain. And imagine what happens when ebook apps get on-board with hypertext links for their actual footnotes! Holy shit. I think I just blew my own mind. I’m gonna go look at some pictures of kittens.