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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
Displays
Computers
Display
Wave
Computer
Future

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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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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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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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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 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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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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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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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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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.
Ted Nelson