The paperless office is possible, but not by imitating paper. Note that the horseless carriage did not work by imitating horses.
Ted NelsonHistory is fractal. The closer you look, the more complicated, yet always repeating patterns.
Ted NelsonI 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 NelsonThey were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.
Ted NelsonWhat 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 NelsonI 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.
Ted Nelson