Quotes by Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.

Beginners

Emergencies

Simple

Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.

Computer

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.

Book

Cutting

People

Everything is deeply intertwingled.

History is fractal. The closer you look, the more complicated, yet always repeating patterns.

Complicated

Looks

Patterns

How is MS-DOS like MSG? Both raise your blood pressure and give you a tightening sensation around your forehead.

Blood

Giving

Msg

I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don’t, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That’s why programming – or buying software – on the basis of “lists of features” is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess.

Believe

Differences

Garbage Cans

I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round – but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.

Irrelevance

Numbers

World

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

Concerned

Kind

Media

Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged – people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. Everything is deeply intertwingled.

Emptiness

People

Pretending

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Beginners

Believe

Bills

Blood

Body

Book

Complicated

Computer

Concerned

Connections

Cutting

Decision

Defining

Design

Differences

Doe

Easy

Emergencies

Emptiness

Fields

Fishes

Fool

Friendly

Garbage Cans

Giving

Hard

Horse

Humans

Ideas

Irrelevance

Kind

Looks

Matter

Mean

Media

Microsoft Word

Morning

Msg

Numbers

Obsolete

Office

Oracles

Paper

Patterns

People

Planets

Politics

Power Corrupts

Pretending

Program

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.

Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.

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.

Everything is deeply intertwingled.

History is fractal. The closer you look, the more complicated, yet always repeating patterns.

How is MS-DOS like MSG? Both raise your blood pressure and give you a tightening sensation around your forehead.

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

Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged – people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. Everything is deeply intertwingled.

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Topics by Ted Nelson

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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