lf
Hypercard. I still remember how astonished I was during my month of
learning about buttons and links and about surfing by association,
objects and images. Being able, by just clicking on part of the screen,
to open piles of cards, with each card offering new buttons and each
button opening onto a new series of them. In short, learning everything
about the web that today seems really routine was a revelation for me.
I hear Steve Jobs and his team had the same kind of shock when they
discovered the forerunner of the Mac in the labs of Rank Xerox.

Since then I have been writing directly on the screen. I use a paper
print-out only occasionally, to help me fix up an article, or to give
somebody who doesn't like screens a rough idea, something immediate. It
is only an approximation, because print forces us into a linear
relationship: the words scroll out page by page most of the time. But
when you have links, you have a different relationship to time and
space in your imagination. And for me, it is a great opportunity to use
this reading/writing interplay, whereas leafing through a book gives
only a suggestion of it -- a vague one because a book is not meant for
that."

2000: YOURDICTIONARY.COM

[Overview]

After founding A Web of Online Dictionaries (WOD) in 1995, Robert Beard
included it in a larger project, yourDictionary.com, that he cofounded
in early 2000. He wrote in January 2000: "The new website is an index
of 1,200+ dictionaries in more than 200 languages. Besides the WOD, the
new website includes a word-of-the-day-feature, word games, a language
chat room, the old Web of On-line Grammars (now expanded to include
additional language resources), the Web of Linguistic Fun, multilingual
dictionaries; specialized English dictionaries; thesauri and other
vocabulary aids; language identifiers and guessers, and other features;
dictionary indices. yourDictionary.com will hopefully be the premiere
language portal and the largest language resource site on the web. It
is now actively acquiring dictionaries and grammars of all languages
with a particular focus on endangered languages. It is overseen by a
blue ribbon panel of linguistic experts from all over the world."

[In Depth (published in 2001)]

After creating A Web of Online Dictionaries in 1995, Robert Beard
cofounded yourDictionary.com in early 2000. He wrote in January 2000:
"A Web of Online Dictionaries (WOD) is now a part of yourDictionary.com
(a