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
Simple
Conceptual
Doe
Globe
Problem
Globes
Good
Software
Clarity
Friendly
Morning
Clear
Friendliness

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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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 objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.
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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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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
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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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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
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Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
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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 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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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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Making things easy is hard.
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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it.
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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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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 purpose of computers is human freedom.
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