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The purpose of computers is human freedom.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Purpose
Freedom
Human
Humans
Computers
Computer

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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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Making things easy is hard.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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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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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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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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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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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 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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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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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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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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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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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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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
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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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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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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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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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