Ted Nelson's idea was/is called "Xanadu":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
The Xanadu vision is centered on a hypertext system, like the Web. But unlike the Web, it also includes such things as:
- A mechanism for embedding live documents within other documents ("transclusion": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion)
- Bidirectional links, that updated themselves automatically when the address of the linked document changed (see http://dubinko.info/blog/2009/11/22/how-xanadu-works/)
- An addressing system that goes beyond just documents to let you link directly to any range of content you wish ("tumblers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbler_(Project_Xanadu))
- Automatic, redundant cross-network storage of all documents (a built-in Wayback Machine)
- A micropayments system for content creators to sell access to what they create
- Strong identity built in (a necessity if you want to also have payments built in)
... and much more.
Xanadu is (in theory anyway) a much more sophisticated system than the Web is even today, never mind the Web as it was when TBL first designed it. Back then it was so much more crude than Xanadu as to barely merit comparison.
But in a way that was TBL's genius, because, while the Web was much more crude than Xanadu architecturally, it was something that could actually be implemented with the early-'90s technology he had on hand. Xanadu, a much grander vision, was so much grander that it has defied fifty years' worth of efforts to implement it. (Back when Wired was worth reading, they ran a good piece on the state of those efforts circa 1995: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ It's still defying implementation today, more than twenty years later.)
So we ended up with the Web we have, which kinda sorta works except for all the ways that it really doesn't. (Paying content creators, for instance.) Ted Nelson saw all those problems coming, all the way back in 1960, and he tried to come up with a system that would head them all off. He hasn't succeeded (not yet, anyway!), but you have to admire both the vision and the attempt.
