Ted Nelson in Herzog's "Lo and Behold"

Ted Nelson who coined the term _hypertext_ in _1963_ claimed in Werner Herzog’s documentary “Lo and Behold” that his original idea for “copy and paste” would always link back to the original. This article below based on the Herzog interview has more context but not the exact _quote_ (context pun intended) that I remember from the documentary. Full interview of Ted Nelson from “Lo and Behold”: [this video] > Nelson, who was featured in Werner Herzog’s latest film, Lo and Behold, believes that instead of the existing formats we use online, where text often mirrors the constraints of paper, we should have a system of two-way links that would allow readers to see the context of any quotation... > There are a few offline examples, such as the Talmud and the Rosetta Stone, where text is read side-by-side. Nelson believes this is how online documents should be constructed. > “As far as I’m concerned, this is the way literature should develop,” he says. “I don’t consider this technology, I think it’s literature. Being able to see visible connections between pages seems to me absolutely fundamental.” > Nelsons says this setup would be the ideal format for reading annotations, additional details, correspondence, and disagreements: “It’s essentially a different genre of writing.” > As Nelson sees it, our current use of online documents is very limiting. He’s particularly disturbed by how we use the words cut and paste. When the Macintosh was introduced in 1984, cut came to mean “hide this pi

My read was similar, I also couldn’t get through Lo and Behold which set off bullshit alarms [0] and just gave me the impression of confidence being used in the place of actual explanation. It feels like an emperor has no clothes situation. For some reason people think it signals high status or intellectualism to like Herzog so they say they do. I haven’t watched all of his movies so this may be unfairly harsh, but that was my initial impression. Portal podcast also came across that way to me. First interview with Thiel was interesting, but I stopped somewhere after the next couple. Too much “the media doesn’t want us to talk about this” and “the Clintons are a globalist conspiracy against the people”. If you have real arguments then make them. Don’t just confidently state things as fact without backing them up. Thankfully when Sam Harris was on he at least pushed back on some of the bullshit. [0]: [this video]