I don't get the Ted Nelson hype. What is the unique contribution of Ted Nelson? If it is the idea of hypertext then I fear there were many other who had similar notions. Sincerely interested in someone explaining it.
I remember sitting in the car outside the bookstore reading it - it was fascinating, I couldn't wait until I got home.
Seems to me he had some pretty innovative ideas early on, but he's not really an engineer and he could never make it work. He was sort of at the right place at the right time to make some kind of impact anyway.
He's also really good at self promotion.
from the bio on the site selling his book:
“ Nelson co-founded Itty bitty machine company, or "IBM", which was a small computer retail store operating from 1977 to 1980 in Evanston, Illinois. The Itty bitty machine company was one of the few retail stores to sell the original Apple I computer. In 1978 he had a significant impact upon IBM's thinking when he outlined his vision of the potential of personal computing to the team that three years later launched the IBM PC.”
(heartily recommend getting a paper copy of the book if you got $120 lying around, it’s really a unique stack of paper)
> ..In a 2011 article published by Time, Ayyadurai claimed he invented email as a teenager in the late 1970s.