Quote

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

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Like
Obvious
Notion
Wriggling
Arms
Hypertext
Already
Footnotes
Struggle
Struggling
Free
Immediately
Ideas
Cat
Trying
Seemed

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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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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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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.
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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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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
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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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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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So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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