Internet Pioneers: Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson is a somewhat controversial figure in the computing world. For thirty-something years he has been having grand ideas but has never seen them through to completed projects. His biggest project, Xanadu, was to be a world-wide electronic publishing system that would have created a sort universal libary for the people.He is known for coining the term "hypertext." He is also seen as something of a radical figure, opposing authority and tradition. He has been called "one of the most influential contrarians in the history of the information age." (Edwards, 1997). He often repeats his four maxims by which he leads his life: "most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong." (Wolf, 1995)

Beginnings

Nelson was raised by his grandparents in Greenwich Village, New York. His father is a movie director and his mother an actor. He had little contact with his father and almost none with his mother. He was lonely as a child and had problems caused by his Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Nelson attended Swarthmore college where he earned a BA in philosophy. In 1960, he enrolled in graduate school at Harvard. During his first year he attempted a term project creating a writing system similar to a word processor, but that would allow different versions and documents to be linked together nonlinearly, by association. This was, in part, an attempt to keep track of his own sometimes frantic associations and daydreamings brought about by his ADD.[continue]