Maybe one implementation of this is that if the people we talk to (perhaps via a chat app) have their own Zettelkasten, the chat is supplemented/augmented by each others Zettelkasten (either publicly or privately) so we have a deeper understanding of each other and we can go on interesting tangents and create new links. This also aids in more progressive discussions.
(I'll add this concept to my Zettel and see where it takes me :) Thanks for the inspiration)
I could also see it being too overwhelming and nobody reading the extra context available to them.
For contracts, there is a customary order, you start with subject of the contract and end with force majeure, severability, term etc.
I don’t believe there is a hyperlinked inherent structure in legal documents. Skilled lawyers can of course draft a meaningful, concise document. But, I think that’s analogous to a skilled programmer writing clear and understandable code.
Most lawyers I know dread formatting and checking for cross-refs.
However, I think we do have one quality, we are used to subconsciously analyze sentences for ambiguities, double meanings, logical contradictions etc. Therefore, lawyers may use English in a way that would do the least harm (or most harm depending on which side they’re on :)).
If we figured out natural language processing or (even if very unlikely) switched our legal documents to an unambigious context-free language such as Lojban, lawyers’ jobs could be entirely automated.
I suspect that impressively structured legal documents stem from templates that have been perfected over the years by multiple lawyers, battle-tested by actual use.
That’s my impression being a junior associate and normally doing the grunt work of checking cross-refs and formatting contracts.
Maybe the problem is English. Maybe there's a way to structure English sentences in a more precise and meaningful way with hypertext linking and structuring like a legal document? ...but for human-to-human communications?