Ted Nelson Quotes About Computers

Quotes about: Computers

• If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards.

  Ted Nelson

  Computer, Wave, Ifs

  "Computer Lib/Dream Machines". Book by Ted Nelson, 1974.

• Any fool can use a computer. Many do.

  Ted Nelson

  Technology, Use, Fool

• 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

  News, Computer, Classroom

• Telling computer guys that they need to have permission to quote things is like having to tell little children about Death.

  Ted Nelson

  Children, Guy, Needs

• Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.

  Ted Nelson

  Computer, Power Corrupts, Obsolete

• The purpose of computers is human freedom.

  Ted Nelson

  Purpose, Computer, Humans

• 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

  Acceptance, Technology, Ideas

  "In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates" by John Markoff, www.nytimes.com. January 10, 2009.

• You can and must understand computers now.

  Ted Nelson

  Computer

  "Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now". Book by Ted Nelson, 1974.

• The world is not yet finished, but everyone is behaving as if everything was known. This is not true. In fact, the computer world as we know it is based upon one tradition that has been waddling along for the last fifty years, growing in size and ungainliness, and is essentially defining the way we do everything. My view is that today’s computer world is based on techie misunderstandings of human thought and human life. And the imposition of inappropriate structures throughout the computer is the imposition of inappropriate structures on the things we want to do in the human world.

  Ted Nelson

  Views, Years, Defining

• Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do.

  Ted Nelson

  Computer

  "The curse of Xanadu" by Gary Wolf, www.wired.com. June 1, 1995.

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

  Ted Nelson

  Mean, Computer, Desktop

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

  Ted Nelson

  Numbers, Arbitrary, Information

• 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

  Moving, Topics, Computer

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

  Ted Nelson

  Inspirational, Funny, Graduation

• 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

  Connections, Records, Paper

• 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

  Decision, Fields, Computer

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