I Think I Know Who Satoshi Is

Ted Nelson is very quotable and I would highly recommend reading at least the freely available excerpt [1] from his seminal 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines to anyone who frequents HN. For those who don't know, his most famous invention is the term "hypertext" and he also appears to have invented, though is lest often acknowledged for, the history stack with its accompanying "back" button in Web browsers. Nelson's writings have a different sensibility from the mainstream of both his fellow computing pioneers of the 1970s and the hackers of today. An example of his thinking from before even UNIX was a household name is that Nelson decried hierarchy as a form of organization for data (e.g., in a computer's file system), instead emphasizing association [2], which he thought closer to how humans actually organize knowledge. He also argued that instead of dialogue-based computer instruction that was taking off at the time the best method to use a computer for learning would be to "motivate the user and let him loose in a wonderful place", that place being a hypertext knowledge base (see [1], p. 313). It is disappointing that in spite of Nelson's books being incredibly influential (to the point where they were reprinted by Microsoft Press because of the company's fondness for the author) most of his ideas never saw a complete implementation in a popular product. I'd love to read a doctoral thesis/book on the history of Project Xanadu -- a hypertext Web project started in 196