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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.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Able
Computer
Way
Paper
Would
Thoughts
Structures
Hold
Medium
Records
Mediums
Since
Connections
Point
Structure
Form
Record

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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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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Making things easy is hard.
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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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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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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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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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So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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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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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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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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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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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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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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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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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
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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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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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