[Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Works # Seven books, the 1965 paper, a patent, and the films. Titles, publishers and years as given by Wikipedia, his own pages and the Internet Archive. Links go to his store, the Internet Archive or the publisher of record. ## Books ### Computer Lib / Dream Machines Self-published, 1974. Revised edition, Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1987. Republished by the author. Two books bound back to back with two front covers. Computer Lib: you can and must understand computers now. Dream Machines: the hypermedia future and Project Xanadu. The underground manifesto of the personal-computer revolution, sold today from his own store. [More](https://computerlibbook.com/). ### Literary Machines Mindful Press, 1981; editions to 93.1 (1993). ISBN 0-89347-055-4. The report on, and of, Project Xanadu concerning word processing, electronic publishing, hypertext, thinkertoys, tomorrow's intellectual revolution, and certain other topics including knowledge, education and freedom. Defines hypertext, names transclusion, explains tumblers and the docuverse. Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 pages call it essential reading. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). ### The Home Computer Revolution 1977. His guide to the coming personal computer, written the year the Apple II shipped. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). ### The Future of Information ASCII Corporation, Tokyo, 1997. Written during his Japanese years, for a Japanese publisher. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). ### Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way Mindful Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-578-00438-9. 199 pages. A short, opinionated history of computing as a series of accidents and impositions, told by someone who was there for most of it. [More](https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780578004389). ### POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization Mindful Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-89347-004-3. His autobiography, launched at the Internet Archive on 8 October 2010. [More](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). ### Life, Love, College, etc. 1959. His first book, published the year he left Swarthmore. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). Computer Lib/Dream Machines is still under copyright and no free image of its cover exists, so it is described here rather than shown. He sells his own republication at [computerlibbook.com](https://computerlibbook.com/). ## Papers, essays and the patent - Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate. Proceedings of the ACM 20th National Conference, August 1965, pp. 84-100. doi 10.1145/800197.806036. The first published use of hypertext and hypermedia. [Link](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800197.806036). - A cosmology for a different computer universe: data model, mechanisms, virtual machine and visualization infrastructure. Journal of Digital Information, vol. 5 no. 1, January 2004. On ZigZag. [Link](https://jodi-ojs-tdl.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/jodi-129). - Where My Ideas Came From-- for Brewster. Essay for Brewster Kahle, 11 January 2018, posted to the Internet Archive. Bush, Coleridge and the 1960 Harvard term project. [Link](https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11). - Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners. 1999, on his site. His computer paradigm compressed to one-liners; the source of most of the quotations people repeat. [Link](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - Interactive connection, viewing, and maneuvering system for complex data. US Patent 6,262,736, issued 17 July 2001 (expired 2019). The ZigZag patent. [Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6262736B1/en). ## Films and video series - The Epiphany of Slocum Furlow. 1959. Experimental student film made at Swarthmore, scored by Peter Schickele. Screened at his Possiplex launch in 2010. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - Computers for Cynics. 2012-. An eight-part series on his YouTube channel, from The Myth of Technology to Closure: Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson). - The Jackal's Curse. 2019. A feature-length reply to Wired's 1995 The Curse of Xanadu. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). His channel, [youtube.com/thetednelson](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson), holds about eighty videos; the [videos page](https://tednelsonfan.com/videos/) lists the ones verified for this site. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com.