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The objective of hypertext research is to save the planet.

Ted Nelson

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Ted Nelson
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: June 17
Philosopher
Sociologist
Teacher
Paris
France
Theodor Holm Nelson
Objectives
Planet
Save
Planets
Research
Hypertext
Objective

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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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.
Ted Nelson
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
Ted Nelson
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A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
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
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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.
Ted Nelson
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
Ted Nelson
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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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They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted Nelson
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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.
Ted Nelson
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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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.
Ted Nelson
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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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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
Ted Nelson
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Making things easy is hard.
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?
Ted Nelson
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
Ted Nelson
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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.
Ted Nelson
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Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
Ted Nelson
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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'.
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.
Ted Nelson