It’s all a matter of collapsing infinities, which no one really wants. Yes, “collapsing infinities” sounds romantic and epic, it stirs that special part in our souls, but this is something we all need to carefully consider before forging ahead.

Listen: The foundation of the web is the link. This all begins tidily as a connection between two points. Then more links are added, and for a while you have a simple chain. Today we have millions of interconnections, and since the modern American mind isn’t agile enough to grasp this concept on an instinctual and intellectual level, we must use “the web” as a happy metaphor. And this is fine, too. But now we’re plagued by lists of links, links to lists of links, and worse, lists of links to lists of links. You see where I’m headed?

One day, some innocent HTML goon is going to set up a link connecting his/her page to, say, a Pamela Anderson shrine. Then he/she’ll put that link on the Internet, and someone, eager for the latest, will click on it. The Pamela Anderson page is really just a list of other Pamela Anderson sites (numbering 300,000+), and the link will continue, from site to site, unabated, unstoppable, relentless. In the blink of an eye the link will return to where it started and continue around again, and soon everyone’s links will end up in this vicious cycle, crisscrossing forever, never arriving. This will cause a massive technical snag, of course, but the energy involved will be too great and then we get the aforementioned collapsing infinities, matter falling into itself, a force so powerful not even light can escape.