Quote

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.

Ted Nelson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Intellectual
Felt
Thought
Going
Invented
Make
Filmmaker
Time
Contribution
Field
Fields

More quotes by Ted Nelson

Image
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.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
Everything is deeply intertwingled.
Ted Nelson
Image
The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
Ted Nelson
Image
Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry
Ted Nelson
Image
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.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
Ted Nelson
Image
Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The purpose of computers is human freedom.
Ted Nelson
Image
Making things easy is hard.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
We live in media, as fish live in water.
Ted Nelson
Image
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
Image
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