Difference

For 2,500 years in the West, we’ve tried to settle matters, because that’s what it meant to know something. Hyperlinks have revealed that that’s really just a result of using paper to codify knowledge: Books settle matters because they’re self-contained, fundamentally disconnected from other books, written by a relative handful of
people, and impossible to change after they are printed. So, our basic strategy for knowing has been to resolve differences and move on: There’s only one right answer, and once it’s known, we write it down, and go on to the next question.

That works fine for a small class of factual information. But, much of what we want to understand is too big, complex, and arguable to
ever be settled.

The hyperlinked world—the Web—is made for this way of networked knowing. A hyperlinked world includes all differences and disagreements, and connects them to one another. We are all smarter for having these differences only a click away. The challenge now is to learn how to evaluate, incorporate, respect, and learn from them. If we listen only to those who are like us, we will squander the great opportunity before us: To live together peacefully in a world of unresolved differences.

~David Weinberger