What exactly is “The Web” and “HTML” and Why it Matters.

Introduction For most of human history, knowledge travelled slowly. A scholar would observe something, form a claim, and write it down. If the claim depended on another source (a book, a case, a paper, or a previous discovery) the author would attach a footnote or endnote. These notes served two purposes. First, they gave the due credit to the original thinker. Second, they guided curious readers toward deeper research. A serious book or academic paper therefore becomes more than a single piece of writing. It becomes a node in a network of ideas. One text points to another, which points to another, and over time an immense intellectual structure forms. Civilisations built knowledge this way: through cross-referencing. If you imagine thousands or millions of such works, all pointing to one another through references and citations, you begin to see something remarkable. Knowledge starts to resemble a web. But, for most of human history, there was always a big problem with this system. Th