> “Any nitwit can understand computers and many do.” In 1974 computers were the province of a priesthood: holders of arcane knowledge who communicated with one another in cryptic language and controlled great power. The mission of his book he wrote in all caps:
COMPUTERS BELONG TO ALL MANKIND. COMPUTER POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
> Xanadu would be a world of interconnected text, graphics, sound, and video. Like the World Wide Web, which didn’t exist, but with bidirectional links that didn’t break, version management, transparent compensation for authors, and deep support for expression that recognized the nonlinearity of thought. In short, the Web done right (and conceived long before.)
https://medium.com/pragmatic-programmers/ted-nelsons-unfinished-revolution-49f2632811bc
@mc
I met Ted in the early 1980s right after he wrote 'Literary Machines'. I got a copy of one the few hand-bound galleys of book he was distributing at a conference.
I wonder if it's worth anything?