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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
Save
Planets
Research
Hypertext
Objective
Objectives
Planet

More quotes by Ted Nelson

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The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more.
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Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
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If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.
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We live in media, as fish live in water.
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So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
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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 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.
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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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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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The purpose of computers is human freedom.
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Making things easy is hard.
Ted Nelson
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Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.
Ted Nelson
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Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
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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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.
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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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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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
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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