Encoding Context In Links

A page in a web application shows formatted objects, menus, or things that pertain directly to the application domain. Like lists of objects from the database, or a single object, selected from the database and presented to the user. Lists of objects, or a single object, are part of the link the user has clicked, or pasted into the browser address bar. No matter actually, it's the notion uniform resource identification — the mechanism realizing this idea is secondary. The goal is that the link text identifies a resource within the application. But is that the extent of the information encoded into a single URI? Or do applications, as they become more sophisticated from a user interface perspective, need to provide context to the pages that render these URIs?