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

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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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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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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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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The purpose of computers is human freedom.
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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
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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 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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The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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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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