If Son is to leave a legacy, it might be this: A way of managing via influence rather than control that is as logically connected as hyperlinks and as serendipitous as Web surfing.
Microsoft may have solved that problem with MyLifeBits software, still in development, which is letting users annotate their stored data with hyperlinks and voice notatations, while automatically recording web pages, IM transcripts, radio and television.
BT, Britain's telecoms incumbent, which in 2000 announced that it had a patent on hyperlinks, a technology that allows people to click on a web-page link to go to another web address.