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