---
title: "The Hyperlinked Organization"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/5/the-hyperlinked-organization.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/5/the-hyperlinked-organization.html"
published: "2003-09-05T20:52:00"
updated: "2003-09-05T20:52:00"
tags: ["Cool Articles", "Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "A post on the Xtreme Programming mailing list pointed to this article: The Hyperlinked Organization (David Weinberger) It's a wonderful read. Here's a quote: .. Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# The Hyperlinked Organization

By Roy Osherove September 5, 2003 In [Cool Articles](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-articles), [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published September 5, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

A post on the Xtreme Programming mailing list pointed to this article:

[The Hyperlinked Organization](http://www.cluetrain.com/passages.html#hyperlinked) (David Weinberger)

It's a wonderful read. Here's a quote:

_.. Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with (containing) all the answers but someone who knows where to find answers. The new experts have value not by centralizing information and control but by being great "pointers" to other people and to useful, current information._

_In short, your most valuable employee is likely to be the one who, in response to a question, doesn't give a concrete answer in a booming voice but who says, "You should talk to Larry. And check Janis's project plan. Oh, and there's a mailing list on this topic I ran into a couple of weeks ago — "_

This article is part of a book that I now really really want to buy: [The cluetrain menifesto](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738202444/iserializable-20). (It appears you can get the full book online but the link is broken. Still, here's [chapter 1](http://www.cluetrain.com/apocalypso.html) in full.)

**Update**:

I found the full book [available in full online](http://www.peak.org/~luomat/misc/cluetrain/www.gonzomarkets.com/cluetrain/) here. Have fun.

## More in Cool Articles

[All posts in Cool Articles](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-articles)

- Sep 8, 2003

    ### [Issues and solutions with Process and Request Identity in ASP.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/8/issues-and-solutions-with-process-and-request-identity-in-as.html)

- Sep 7, 2003

    ### [SQL Server Professional: System-Supplied Trace UDFs](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/7/sql-server-professional-system-supplied-trace-udfs.html)

- Sep 5, 2003

    ### [Service-Oriented Architecture and Programming](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/5/service-oriented-architecture-and-programming.html)

- Sep 4, 2003

    ### [Unit testing links, and NUnit Add-in rocks](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/9/4/unit-testing-links-and-nunit-add-in-rocks.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/