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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
Internet
Interfaces
Within
Beginners
Simple
User
Understand
Emergency
Emergencies
Users
Seconds
Interface
Ten
Beginner

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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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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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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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 Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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Making things easy is hard.
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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, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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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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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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