They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.

In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.

I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.

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.

Most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong.

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.

The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.