The Web

The model behind the Web could be roughly summarized as a way to publish documents represented in a standard way (HTML), containing links to other documents and accessible through the Internet using standard protocols (TCP/IP and HTTP). The result could be seen as a worldwide, distributed file system of interconnected documents that humans can read, exchange and discuss.

You can imagine it as a set of books with references to other books or articles: browsing the Web is not really different from going through a book and following its citations to other publications [...].

(From https://cambridgesemantics.com/blog/semantic-university/intro-semantic-web/intro-linked-data/)