Hypertext
By "hypertext" I mean non-sequential writing. Ordinary writing is sequential for two reasons. First, it grew out of speech and speech-making, which have to be sequential; and second, because books are not convenient to read except in a sequence. But the structures of ideas are not sequential. They tie together every whichway. And when we write, we are always trying to tie things together in non-sequential ways. The footnote is a break from sequence; but it cannot really be extended (though some, like Will Cuppy, have toyed with the technique). […] writers do better if they don't have to write in sequence (but may create multiple structures, branches and alternatives), and readers do better if they don't have to read in sequence, but may establish impressions, jump around, and try different pathways until they find the ones they want to study most closely. [...] in my view, a new day is dawning. Computer storage and screen display mean that we no longer have to have things in sequence; totally arbitrary structures are possible, and I think that after we've tried them enough people will see how desirable they are. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Hypertext
Paper moulders. Microfilm is inconvenient. In the best libraries it takes at least minutes to get a particular thing. But as to linking them together - footnoting Aeschylus with Marcus Aurelius, linking genetic data to 15th-century accounts of Indian tribes - well, you can only do it on paper by writing something new that ties them together. Isn't that ridiculous? When you could do it all electronically in seconds? Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Hypertext
Now that we have all these wonderful devices, it should be the goal of society to put them in the service of truth and learning. And this is the way I propose. Not through obscure forms of "information retrieval;" not through newly oppressive forms of "computer-assisted instruction;" and not through a purported science of "artificial intelligence“ that will create new personalisms to irk us. All these obstructive oddities, I think, have developed as separate ideals because of the grand preposterosity of Professionalism that has created a world-wide cult of mutual incomprehensibility and disconnected special goals. Now we need to get everybody together again. We want to go back to the roots of our civilization - the ability, which we once had, for everybody who could read to be able to read everything. We must once again become a community of common access to a shared heritage. This was of course what Vannevar Bush said in 1945 in an article everybody cites but nobody reads. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Hypertext
The hypertext solution in many ways obviates some of these other approaches, and in addition retains and puts back together the great traditions of literature and scholarship, traditions based on the fact that dividing things up arbitrarily just generally doesn't work. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Hypertext
In an important sense there are no "subjects" at all; there is only all knowledge since the cross- connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Hypertext at last offers the possibility of representing and exploring it all without carving it destructively. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Everything is Deeply Intertwingled
I believe computer screens can make people happier, smarter, and better able to cope with the copious problems of tomorrow. But only if we do right, right now. WHY? The computer's capability for branching among events, controlling exterior devices, controlling outside events, and mediating in all other events, makes possible a new era of media. Until now, the mechanical properties of external objects determined what they were to us and how we used them. But henceforth this is arbitrary. The recognition of that arbitrariness, and re-consideration among broader and more general alternatives, awaits us. All the previous units and mechanisms of learning, scholarship, arts, transaction and confirmation, and even self-reminder, were based in various ways upon physical objects - the properties of paper, carbon paper, files, books and bookshelves. To read from paper you must move the physical object in front of you. Its contents cannot be made to slide, fold, shrink, become transparent, or get larger. But all this Is now changing, and suddenly. The computer display screen does all these things if desired, to the same markings we have previously handled on paper. The computer display screen is going to become universal very fast; this is guaranteed by the suddenly rising cost of paper. And we will use them for everything. [...] Our screen displays will be alive with animation in their separate segments of activity, and will respond to our actions as if alive physically too. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Fantics