WhoIAm
98.11.09 ( d5
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Who I Am:
Designer, Generalist, Contrarian Theodor
Holm Nelson, 1937-
Best known for: coining terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia," 1963 (first
published 1965), and as founder and pursuer of Project
Xanadu®, which has been widely misunuderstood.
¶ Current positions: Visiting Professor of Environmental Information,
Keio University SFC campus, Fujisawa, Japan • Visiting Professor
of Multimedia, University of Southampton, Southampton, England.
¶ Mentors (aside from my family): Leo Rosten • Michael Scriven
• Thomas C. Schelling • John Walker
¶ Degrees: B.A., Philosophy, Swarthmore. 1959 • M.A.,
Sociology, Harvard, 1963 (from the late lamented Dept. of Social Relations)
¶ Books: Life, Love, College, etc.• Media 72 • Computer
Lib / Dream Machines • The Home Computer Revolution • Literary Machines
• Biostrategy and Polymind • The Checkmate Proposal • The Future of Information
¶ Articles: a large listing of my articles has been kept by Andrew
Pam at the Xanadu Australia site. (Some may not be in correct academic
form, but it's the most complete listing. There is regrettably no
full listing of my magazine articles for ROM, Creative Computing
or NewMedia, since I don't know which ones they published or when.)
¶ Coined these words in some degrees of general use: "hypertext"
and" "hypermedia" (1965) • "zipper lists" (1965) • "softcopy" (ca. 1967)
• "cybercrud" (ca. 1967) • "compound document" (date unclear) • "image
synthesis" (1970); "electronic visualization" (1972 -- and thus the later
"computer visualization", "scientific visualization") • "dildonics" (1974)
• "virtuality" in its computer sense (1975) • "technoid" (1981) •
"docuverse" (1981) • "transclusion" (1987) • "micropayment" (1992)
¶ Awards etc: Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation Lifetime Achievement
Award, 1998, presented at WWW7, Brisbane, Australia • There is an eponymous
"Nelson award" given at the annual ACM hypertext conference for the best
paper by a newcomer (sponsored by Microcosm, Ltd.)
.