One of my goals is to create a company.
"My goal is to create a company" is a semantic container. In my mind, at least, I can open that container and there are things in it. I think this is an important concept precisely because a construct like "create a company" contains, implicitly, many things. Such a constructs is likely to be interpreted, by someone who encounters it, for example in the context of "join me," as a nonsensical dreamy wish, because it describes something very large - something consisting of many parts - in a very few words. The justification for that, whether it works or not, is semantics.
A semantic container is a kind of statement. The "statement" construct comes from programming - that's where I got it - where it seems to denote an executable instruction. As a kind of statement, the container is executable in the sense that it can be unpacked. A statement of the container type translates as "unpack this: (the statement)."
Inside a container type statement will be other statements, and these are likely to be also of the container type, but can also be of other types, which might generally called "direct" type statements (with "recursions" and "redirections" being other types, or variations).
A statement may contain only containers. In this case the statement may be termed not executable, or, more correctly, available for inspection and editing. A directly executable statement will contain, directly or indirectly, direct type statements. A statement is indirectly in a statement if it is in a container in the statement. It is directly in a statement if it is in the statement and not in any container in the statement.
The statement "one of my goals is to create a company" implicitly contains an assortment of goals. A goal is a container type statement, or is likely to be a container type statement, so, inside the container "one of my goals is to create a company" is a container "create a company."
That's a bit muddled. As a statement, the statement "one of my goals is to create a company" creates the "my goals" statement, which is of the container type, and puts in it the "create a company" statement, which is also of the container type. "One of my goals is to create a company" is thus perhaps not in the strictest sense a container type statement. In programming it might be described as an initialization script. That would be a new statement type within the scope of this story.
I am writing, which means I am using the medium called writing. In the action of writing, pictures, called letters, are arranged on surfaces, in groups called words. Words are often arranged in groups called sentences, and sentences are often arranged in groups called paragraphs. Paragraphs are often arranged in groups called essays or chapters, and essays and chapters are often arranged into larger collections called books or volumes.
Writing is an ancient tradition. Books are a more recent tradition. By arranging large amounts of writing on pages, books allow readers to scan large amounts of writing very efficiently. A large amount of writing in a book can be scanned sequentially, by the reader, with the utmost ease, and, also, the reader can move selectively to any part of the writing in a volume or book almost instantaneously. The latter is a very valuable function of books.
An earlier tradition organized large amounts of writing on scrolls. Scrolls are arguably effective for sequential reading but not so effective for moving selectively to one or another place in a large amount of text.
Writers use various technologies to generate text, and then to organize that text into volumes, which can be scrolls or books. A recent innovation is the use of computers for text generation, and, in a somewhat ironic turn of events, this has led to a resurgence of the scroll as a medium for organizing text into volumes. The book's ability to move readers to selected locations in volumes instantaneously has thus in a sense been lost. New devices that can produce this effect within volumes in the digital medium for writing have been developed, but there is evidence they are not extremely well understood. It is very easy to create a scroll of writing in the digital medium, and more difficult to incorporate the ability to move to selected locations, but, at some point, to create effective volumes in the digital medium - where the book is the standard of effectiveness, in this regard - the writer must pause and consider how the tools available for the purpose can be applied.
The primary tool for the purpose is the hypertext link. The link is a very direct expression of semantic container theory. So, I can record a statement, using words (that is, letters), "my goals", and make it into a link: "my goals." The reader can now move to the "my goals" text from this "an introduction" text by activating the "my goals" link, which is identifiable by its color, which is different from the rest of this "an introduction" text, and by being slightly larger than the rest of the text, and by being underlined, and by a visible event of some sort when it is "pointed at," and by the fact that, when it is "clicked," another event is triggered, namely, the "my goals" text enters the visual field.
