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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
Would
Thoughts
Structures
Hold
Medium
Records
Mediums
Since
Connections
Point
Structure
Form
Record
Able
Computer
Way
Paper

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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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.
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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 fool can use a computer. Many do.
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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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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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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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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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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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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.
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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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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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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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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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So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
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Making things easy is hard.
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