Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.

Right now you are a prisoner of each application you use. You have only the options that were given you by the developer of that application.

So, the point was to be able to have a medium that would record all the connections and all the structures and all the thoughts that paper could not. Since the computer could hold any structure in any form, this was the way to go.

We live in media, as fish live in water.

The four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others.

The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.

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.