Ted Nelson Quotes

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

Word, Decided, Crew

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

Computers, Good, Bad

Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.
Ted Nelson

Computers, Mean, Files

I was very intensely concerned with all kinds of new media.
Ted Nelson

Media, Concerned, Kinds

In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.
Ted Nelson

Graduation, School, Year

Project Xanadu is essentially my trademark. It was originally, and has returned to my arms as that.
Ted Nelson

Project, Arms, Trademark

So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
Ted Nelson

Graduation, School, Happened

So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
Ted Nelson

Why, Write, Frustrated

They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted Nelson

Computers, Saying, Nonsense

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

Put, Away, Wanted

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

Looking, Point, View

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

Time, Thought, Same

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

Trying, Free, Ideas

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

Thoughts, Able, Point

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

Spring, Others, Sometimes

The ideas keep going, you have the material, you cut because there's a limit to the space allowed to you. And the space is limited because of some other constraints that have to do with money or printing or whatever.
Ted Nelson

Money, Keep, Whatever

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

Decisions, Point, Carry

What we now call the browser is whatever defines the web. What fits in the browser is the World Wide Web and a number of trivial standards to handle that so that the content comes.
Ted Nelson

Whatever, Call, Number

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Author

Born: 1937

Links

Find on Amazon: Ted Nelson

Cite this Page: Citation

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