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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Computer
Deal
Deals
Numbers
Information
Arbitrary
Saying
Computers
Kind
Nonsense
Absolutely

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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The point is that these decisions they've made are partly for your convenience and partly for theirs and partly out of stereotypes that they carry with them from the conventions of the computer field.
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Making things easy is hard.
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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.
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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The purpose of computers is human freedom.
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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.
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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.
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The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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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.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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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.
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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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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.
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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.
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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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The problem is not software 'friendliness'. It is conceptual clarity. A globe does not say, 'good morning'. It is simple and clear, not 'friendly'.
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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