His SRI team that developed the NLS hypertext system applied this strategy by using the tool they had developed to improve the tool.
The term "bootstrap paradox" refers to the expression "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"; the use of the term for the time-travel paradox was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein's story By His Bootstraps.
In philosophical arguments concerning the reducibility (or otherwise) of the human mind, Dennett's concept pokes fun at the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high, either originating from one or more gods, or providing its own grounds in an absurd, Münchhausen-like bootstrapping manner.
Volume boot record, in computer disks, a type of boot sector that contains code for bootstrapping programs