> And HTML wasn't the first markup technology.  It wasn't the first hypertext
> technology either.

This is a very important point.  People arguing to make HTML more complex
and more presentational generally ague that that constitutes progress.

In fact, the progress step in HTML wasn't the invention of hypertext,
or even the network linking of resources (that was Gopher).  The 
key progress features were:

- making it so simple that any literate person could use it in
  a very short time (compared with the complex data formats and
  authoring tools in use for the existing hypertext tools);

- making it non-presentational, so that it could be used on any medium,
  and also contributing the simplicity.

Actually talking of hypertext, very little hypertext is used in modern
commercial web design practice.  Most of it is based on a much older
user interface (not that HTML was intended as a user interface
language) paradigm of menus.  To my personal knowledge, menu based
computer interface were fairly standard 30 years ago, as were fill
the forms interfaces.