Hypertext Quotes & Sayings

Let me introduce the word 'hypertext' to mean a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper. — Ted Nelson

The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet. — Ted Nelson

Hypertext is an idea. The Internet is a medium. They grow up beside each other, they influence each other, and their evolving relationship will probably provide a great story for future biographers. — Mark Bernstein

Berners-Lee was supremely lucky in the work environment he had settled into, the Swiss particle physics lab CERN. It took him ten years to nurture his slow hunch about a hypertext information platform. — Steven Johnson

The Web is actually a coming together of three technologies, if you like: the hypertext, the personal computer, and the network. So, the network we had, and the personal computers were there, but people didn't use them, because they didn't know what to use them for, except maybe for a few games. — Robert Cailliau

Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [ ... ] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is. — Donald A. Norman

What is hypertext? It is a method of giving a text more depth, structuring it, and letting the computer help you explore it. Links, like we know today - you see some blue underlined word and you click on it and it takes you somewhere else. That's the simplest definition of hypertext. — Robert Cailliau

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project — Tim Berners-Lee

The serendipitous nature of hypertext links is just brilliant for a curious mind. I love it. — Thomas Watson Jr.

While we may blame the Internet for the ease with which conspiracy theories proliferate, the net is really much more culpable for the way it connects everything to almost everything else. The hypertext link, as we used to call it, allows any fact or idea to become intimately connected with any other. — Douglas Rushkoff

Hypertext, as Nelson [Ted Nelson] originally wrote, is interlinked reading and writing. Links make hypertext. — Mark Bernstein

The fundamental deficiency in HTML is that it reduces hypertext and the intertwinedness of human communication to a question of how it is rendered and what happens when you click on it ... HTML is to the browser what PostScript is to the laser printer. — Erik Naggum

So, that notion of hypertext seemed to me immediately obvious because footnotes were already the ideas wriggling, struggling to get free, like a cat trying to get out of your arms. — Ted Nelson