I had an interesting lunch yesterday with Leo Mirani of The Economist. He's in NYC this week to meet with people interested in news and tech to get their view on where it's all going. 

At one point in the interview he asked a challenging question. 

Does linking have a future?

We had been talking about the attempts of the tech industry to suck news into silos, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Medium, Google -- and if they were to succeed, or if the news industry could obviate the need for such platforms (seems unlikely at this late date), then how could the link have a future?

I was thinking about that as I put together the list of Toolkits that I build on. Look at all the links in that piece, and the links in the pages it links to. 

Conclusion: Linking is part of the language. If linking were to disappear, I would have to stop writing. I don't know how to write without linking.