Internet Pioneers: Ted Nelson
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.”
.. He was lonely as a child and had problems caused by his Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
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.