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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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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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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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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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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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Making things easy is hard.
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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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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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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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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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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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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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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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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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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 technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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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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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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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
Ted Nelson