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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Display
Wave
Computer
Future
Displays
Computers

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
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So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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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 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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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
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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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I thought I was going to be a filmmaker but at the same time I was an intellectual and I felt that I could make a contribution to some field, as yet, not invented.
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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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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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Making things easy is hard.
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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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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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The purpose of computers is human freedom.
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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.
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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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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