Quote

The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.

Ted Nelson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Computers
Classroom
Computer
News
Tell
Good

More quotes by Ted Nelson

Image
So, the point was to be able to have a medium that would record all the connections and all the structures and all the thoughts that paper could not. Since the computer could hold any structure in any form, this was the way to go.
Ted Nelson
Image
I have long been alarmed by people's sheeplike acceptance of the term 'computer technology' - it sounds so objective and inexorable - when most computer technology is really a bunch of ideas turned into conventions and packages.
Ted Nelson
Image
Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
Ted Nelson
Image
The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
Ted Nelson
Image
The four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others.
Ted Nelson
Image
The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
Ted Nelson
Image
So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
Ted Nelson
Image
A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
Ted Nelson
Image
Everybody has only a 24-hour day. Most people, if they increase consumption of one medium (like magazines or books) will cut down on another (like TV). This drastically reduces the sort of growth some people have been expecting.
Ted Nelson
Image
Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
Ted Nelson
Image
So, that notion of hypertext seemed to me immediately obvious because footnotes were already the ideas wriggling, struggling to get free, like a cat trying to get out of your arms.
Ted Nelson
Image
Let me introduce the word 'hypertext' to mean a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper.
Ted Nelson
Image
Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged - people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't. Everything is deeply intertwingled.
Ted Nelson
Image
Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
Ted Nelson
Image
They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted Nelson
Image
I am looking at it from the point of view of a harried user, which I am, and I believe that I am much more like the typical non-technical harried user than I am like the people who smoothly operate everything.
Ted Nelson
Image
So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided.
Ted Nelson
Image
Making things easy is hard.
Ted Nelson
Image
But it seemed to me that as soon as you have computer storage you could put every point you wanted in - make the ones that are less relevant to your central topic, further away or allow the central topic to move as the reader proceeded.
Ted Nelson
Image
Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry
Ted Nelson