Tim Berners‑Lee’s 1998 essay, “Cool URIs Don’t Change,” argues that the Web’s long‑term usefulness hinges on stable resource identifiers. He explains that while content may evolve, the URI that points to it should remain constant, so that bookmarks, citations and search‑engine indexes keep working. The author warns against “link rot,” the phenomenon where changing URLs break references, and he proposes a simple design principle: separate the identification of a resource from its representation.

He also cites the growing use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) and the role of the World Wide Web and the W3C in setting best practices. By keeping URIs cool and unchanged, the Web can evolve without fragmenting the network of knowledge that users rely on daily.