Here in Geneva I’m taking part in a discussion of whether the right to link to other websites should be guaranteed by international treaty. Suddenly I’m reminded of the classic scifi novel STAND ON ZANZIBAR, by John Brunner. One of Brunner’s characters, a self-consciously hip sociologist named Chad Mulligan, has written his own version of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Mulligan’s work, ridiculously titled the “Hipcrime Vocab,” offers the following for the word “ditto”:

DITTO — Use it! The mental process involved is exactly analogous to the bandwidth-saving technique employed on your phone. If you’ve seen the scene then you’ve seen the scene. There’s just too much new information for you to waste time looking over it more than once. Use “ditto.” Use it!

Nowadays, we can read Mulligan’s “Use it!” as an imperative to link.

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