"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"
About this Quote
Nelson isn’t praising the computer as a faster typewriter; he’s framing it as a rebellion against paper’s quiet tyranny. Paper forces thought to march in a single file: page after page, bound, numbered, flattened. His insistence on “all the connections and all the structures” is a manifesto for nonlinearity, a bet that the mind’s real shape is webbed and recursive, not chaptered and obedient.
The key move is his absolutist phrasing: “any structure in any form.” It’s utopian, almost daring you to object. In the 1960s and 70s, when Nelson was developing ideas that would become hypertext (and the famously over-ambitious Project Xanadu), this wasn’t just technical optimism; it was cultural agitation. Bureaucracies, libraries, and schools were built around paper’s constraints. If you could escape the page, you could also escape the gatekeepers and the habits of authority that the page smuggles in.
Subtextually, Nelson is arguing that knowledge isn’t a stack; it’s a network, and a medium should honor that. The computer “could hold” these structures, but he’s really talking about what it could legitimize: marginalia that doesn’t stay marginal, citations that behave like live wires, ideas that remain connected to their sources rather than cut loose and footnoted into oblivion.
There’s also a whiff of impatience in “this was the way to go” - not a tentative proposal, but a verdict. It’s the rhetoric of someone who sees the future as obvious and is frustrated the rest of the world is still stapling thoughts to sheets of dead trees.
The key move is his absolutist phrasing: “any structure in any form.” It’s utopian, almost daring you to object. In the 1960s and 70s, when Nelson was developing ideas that would become hypertext (and the famously over-ambitious Project Xanadu), this wasn’t just technical optimism; it was cultural agitation. Bureaucracies, libraries, and schools were built around paper’s constraints. If you could escape the page, you could also escape the gatekeepers and the habits of authority that the page smuggles in.
Subtextually, Nelson is arguing that knowledge isn’t a stack; it’s a network, and a medium should honor that. The computer “could hold” these structures, but he’s really talking about what it could legitimize: marginalia that doesn’t stay marginal, citations that behave like live wires, ideas that remain connected to their sources rather than cut loose and footnoted into oblivion.
There’s also a whiff of impatience in “this was the way to go” - not a tentative proposal, but a verdict. It’s the rhetoric of someone who sees the future as obvious and is frustrated the rest of the world is still stapling thoughts to sheets of dead trees.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|
More Quotes by Ted
Add to List
