Ted Nelson Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.”

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

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

“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.”