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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
Ted Nelson
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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Trademarks
Returned
Originally
Essentially
Project
Projects
Arms
Trademark
More quotes by Ted Nelson
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.
Ted Nelson
Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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
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
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
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
The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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
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
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
They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted Nelson
So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
Ted Nelson
A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
Ted Nelson
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
If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
Ted Nelson
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
The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
Ted Nelson
Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
Ted Nelson
We live in media, as fish live in water.
Ted Nelson
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
