# Ted Nelson

Information theorist who coined 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' and argued, decades before the personal computer, that computing power must belong to individuals.

**Ted Nelson** (b. 1937) is an American information theorist who coined the words *hypertext* and *hypermedia* in the 1960s and launched Project Xanadu, a lifelong effort to build a deeply linked, two-way document system.

## Key work in the library

- [Computer Lib / Dream Machines](/docs/computer-lib.md) (1974) — a populist manifesto for personal computing fused with a vision of interactive hypertext.

## Significance

Nelson is the bridge between [Vannevar Bush](/wiki/vannevar-bush.md)'s associative Memex and [Berners-Lee](/wiki/berners-lee.md)'s World Wide Web: the idea of a document graph anyone can author and own. His insistence that ordinary people must understand and control computers prefigures the ownership and equity principles of the Independent Internet, and his work is a cultural pillar of [decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md).

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## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [Computer Lib / Dream Machines](/docs/computer-lib.md) — Ted Nelson's two-books-in-one manifesto for personal computing and hypertext, insisting that ordinary people must understand and control computers.