Ted Nelson

Nelson writes passionately about the need for people to understand computers deeply, more deeply than was generally promoted as computer literacy, which he considers a superficial kind of familiarity with particular hardware and software. His rallying cry "Down with Cybercrud" is against the centralization of computers such as that performed by IBM at the time, as well as against what he sees as the intentional untruths that "computer people" tell to non-computer people to keep them from understanding computers. In Dream Machines, Nelson covers the flexible media potential of the computer, which was shockingly new at the time.

THE PERFECT GIFT - Whether you love the computer world the way it is, or consider it a nightmare honkytonk prison, you'll giggle and rage at Ted Nelson's telling of computer history, its personalities and infights. Computer movies, music, 3D; the eternal fight between Jobs and Gates; the tangled stories of the Internet and the World Wide Web; all these and more are punchily told in brief chapters on many topics such as The Web Browser Salad, Voting Machines, Google, Web 2.0 and much more. These short stories make great reading - it's a book to dip in and out of. You'll find answers to such questions as # ""Why do alphabets have upper case, why not numbers?"" # ""Why does everything have to be hierarchical on computers? That's not how *my* projects are organized!"" ""Where did WYSIWYG come from?"" The answer will surprise you. Plus, you'll find out why the author, a well-known computer veteran, hopes it can all become much better.

The autobiography of a controversial thinker, Ted Nelson, who is the person who first conceived many of the concepts central to the digital revolution, only to see many of the concepts realized in ways he deemed incompatible with his vision.

Sweeping prediction of small computers becoming dominant in every aspect of our lives. Wildly radical for its time and eerily accurate. From the 1977 book: “Computer screens on the kitchen table...by the bedside...on the office desk...on the school desk. Computer screens on automobile dashboards, Coke machines, ticket dispensers...”

Some people spend their whole life trying to get what they gave up to get what they got!

Ted Nelson a lifetime Entrepreneur shares his story of the largest leveraged buyout in California history at the time.

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