Computer Lib/Dream Machines Quotes

“…schools as we know them appear designed at every level to sabotage the supposed goals of education.”
― Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines

“America is the land where the machine is an intimate part of our fantasy life.

Germans are too literal, they can get off on well-oiled cogs. The French are too vague. (l've noticed that German science-fiction magazines had covers of machines and planets; French science-fiction magazines, of dragons and people with wings. Our science-fiction covers show people with machines. Intimately, emotionally.)

German fantasy is icy and impersonal, French fantasy too personal, and American fantasy is splat in the middle, uniting both: man and machine, means and ends, emotion and details.

Men always longed to fly, but it was here that they first did. This is the land of the MOVIE, a fantasy fabricated with endless difficulty using various kinds of equipment.

The mad tinkerer is a fabled character in our fiction.”
― Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines

“I know one boy, for instance, whose dream was to put a 33ASR Teletype on wheels under radio control, and alarm people at the computer conference by having it roll up to them and clatter out questions impersonally. (If you knew the kid-- aloof and haughty-seeming-- you might think that's how he approaches people in real life.)

I know a high-school boy (not a computer expert) who programmed a computer to type out a love story, using the BASIC "print" command, the only one he knew. He could not bring himself to write the love story on paper.

The best example I can think of, though, look place at the kids' booth at a computer conference. One of the more withdrawn girls was sitting al an off-line video terminal, idly typing things onto the screen. When she had gone a sentence remained. It said:

I love you all, but at a distance.”
― Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines

“IF THE BUTTON IS NOT SHAPED LIKE THE THOUGHT, THE THOUGHT WILL END UP SHAPED LIKE THE BUTTON.”
― Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines

“I have strong hunches about the inner workings of men who get millions of dollars from the Department of Defense and then say in private that really they're going to use it to create a machine so intelligent it can play with their children. (Not to name names or anything.) An obvious question is, do they play with their children? No. they play with computers.”
― Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines