Quote

The problem is not software 'friendliness'. It is conceptual clarity. A globe does not say, 'good morning'. It is simple and clear, not 'friendly'.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Problem
Globes
Good
Software
Clarity
Friendly
Morning
Clear
Friendliness
Simple
Conceptual
Doe
Globe

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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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 Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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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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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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The purpose of computers is human freedom.
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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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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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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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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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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
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Everything is deeply intertwingled.
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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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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, 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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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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.
Ted Nelson
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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.
Ted Nelson