Six ideas, explained plainly.
Hypertext, Xanadu, transclusion, intertwingularity, the docuverse and ZigZag: what each one means, where he said it, and what the Web did with it. Where a page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his.
Hypertext: writing that branches
The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line.
Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project
Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed.
Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place
Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached.
Intertwingularity: there are no subjects
A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes.
The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version
The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it.
ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need
Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since.