Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology (IT sociolosopher). He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published them in 1965. He also has been credited with first using the words transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity, and teledildonics.
Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interf...
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Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology (IT sociolosopher). He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published them in 1965. He also has been credited with first using the words transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity, and teledildonics.
Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. The effort is documented in his 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines and the 1981 Literary Machines. Much of his adult life has been devoted to working on Xanadu and advocating it.
The Xanadu project itself failed to flourish, for a variety of reasons which are disputed. Journalist Gary Wolf published an unflattering history on Nelson and his project in the June 1995 issue of Wired calling it "the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing". Nelson expressed his disgust on his website, referring to Wolf as a "Gory...
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