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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
Ted Nelson
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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Ten
Beginner
Internet
Interfaces
Within
Beginners
Simple
User
Understand
Emergency
Emergencies
Users
Seconds
Interface
More quotes by Ted Nelson
Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
Ted Nelson
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
We live in media, as fish live in water.
Ted Nelson
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.
Ted Nelson
The problem is not software 'friendliness'. It is conceptual clarity. A globe does not say, 'good morning'. It is simple and clear, not 'friendly'.
Ted Nelson
The purpose of computers is human freedom.
Ted Nelson
They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted Nelson
Everything is deeply intertwingled.
Ted Nelson
Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
Ted Nelson
Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
Ted Nelson
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
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
So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
Ted Nelson
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
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
The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
Ted Nelson
Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
Ted Nelson
So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
Ted Nelson
The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
Ted Nelson
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
