My apologies for asking such a simple question. Instead of posting such basic question in SO, I felt that this is more apt a question here. I tried finding an answer for this but none of them are logically appealing or convincing to my understanding.

Typically, computer memory is always linear. So is the term non linear used for a data structure in a logical sense? If so, to logically achieve non linearity in a linear computer memory, we use pointers. Right?

In that case, if pointers are virtual implementations for achieving non linearity, Why would a data structure like linked list be considered linear if in reality the nodes are never physically adjacent?