Quote

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

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Word
Presented
Body
Introducing
Mean
Complexes
Hypertext
Way
Complex
Conveniently
Material
Pictorial
Materials
Interconnected
Paper
Introduce
Written
Represented

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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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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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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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Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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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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So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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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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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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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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The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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