As We May Think (1945)
Context: The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.
Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 2
As We May Think (1945)
Context: Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.
“I trailed off and he didn't push me to finish. I was finding that I liked that.”
Source: Along for the Ride
Nov. 7, 1922 [Who was Rebecca L. Felton?, http://www.wilkinsons.com/Bananna/2005/08/who-was-rebecca-l-felton.html, Banana Stew, August 2, 2005].
“I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.”
“Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.”
Diary of an Unknown (1988)
