Xanadu Software Released After 54 Years In the Making 90
redletterdave writes: "'Project Xanadu,' designed by hypertext inventor Ted Nelson to let users build documents that automatically embed the sources they're linking back to and show the visible connections between parallel webpages, was released in late April at a Chapman University event. Thing is, development on Xanadu began in 1960 — that's 54 years ago — making it the most delayed software in history. 'At its simplest, Xanadu lets users build documents that seamlessly embed the sources which they are linking back to, creating, in Nelson's words, "an entire form of literature where links do not break as versions change; where documents may be closely compared side by side and closely annotated; where it is possible to see the origins of every quotation; and in which there is a valid copyright system - a literary, legal and business arrangement - for frictionless, non-negotiated quotation at any time and in any amount." The version released on the internet, named OpenXanadu, is a simple document created using quoted sections from eight other works, including the King James Bible and the Wikipedia page on Steady State Theory.'"
Re:Yay, at last! Or? (Score:5, Informative)
I think it might have a niche utility, but to use a car example, this is like making a very top tier points/condensor/magneto system for a car's engine... while the world has moved on to common rail EFI.
I am glad it got released (I remember it being the dream of document presentation well before Mosaic appeared on the NeXT), but there are many other document utilities out there with similar function. PDF and HTML come to mind, perhaps nroff on a limited basis. However, the world has moved on. On the other hand, Xanadu deserves its place in history, just for the concept.
Re:/.ed (Score:4, Informative)
had a very brief look earlier, not sure if the performance pre /.ed was all that different. Kind of multicolored mashup of a Bible text, plus a few other bits, all a bit buggy and not necessarily immediately intuitive.
The real story, rather than this particular proof-of-concept site, probably remains the fact, had they taken a (relatively minor) left turn somewhere along the line in the half-century of development, they could easily have been Google, or Wikipedia. Unfortunately, perfectionism reigned, was always entirely too ambitious a project in scope and the simple law of keeping it simple, stupid was, as always, forgotten along the way.
Fantastic Wired article here ( http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html ) from 95 - long, but well worth a read, Xanadu be definitely back online by the time you get through that..
Repost (Score:5, Informative)
Come on guys, get it together.
Re:Yay, at last! Or? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Ted Nelson hates the whole web as implemented, as in his opinion it's a bastard stepchild that makes the real utility of hypertext impossible. Keyword: "transclusion". His approach as that even the smallest snippet of a quote was transcluded, not copied and pasted. This would seamlessly allow (& depend on) micropayments or microattribution, as appropriate.
Source: Saw him speak, spent a while talking with him 15 or so years ago, have a signed copy of his book.
BTW: Ted also came up with the term "hypertext" IIRC.
1956 story by Sturgeon inspired Nelson/Xanadu (Score:5, Informative)
See "The Skills of Xanadu", as text: http://books.google.com/books?... [google.com]
and as audio: https://archive.org/details/pr... [archive.org]
Around 2001 or 2002, while working at at IBM Research I went to a talk by Ted Nelson there, and I asked him about the story given the similar name. He said that the story had inspired him (at least partially) to do his work, and thanked me for telling him the name of the story, saying he had been looking for that story for a long time. While I did not say so, his reply about looking for the story surprised me given that there are probably not many stories with Xanadu in the title so a library search would have found it I would think.. Ted Nelson records everything around him on a tape recorder (or at least did then), so that interaction should be on one of his tapes...
The 1956 story by Theodore Sturgeon is am amazing work that features a world networked by wireless mobile wearable computing supporting freely shared knowledge and skills through a sort of global internet-like concept. Some of that knowledge was about advanced nanotech-based manufacturing. The system powered an economy reflecting ideas like Bob Black writes about in "The Abolition of Work", where much work had become play coordinated through this global network. The story has inspired other people as well, both me from when I read it (and forgot it mostly for a long time, except for the surprise ending), and also a Master Inventor at IBM I worked with who got inspired by the nanotech aspects of that story when he was young. Even almost sixty years later, that story still has things we can learn from about a vision of a new type of society (including with enhanced intrinsic&mutual security) made possible through advanced computing.
A core theme is an interplay between meshwork and hierarchy, reminiscent of Manuel De Landa's writings:
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/man... [egs.edu]
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems to call for."
See also, for other "old" ideas we could still benefit from thinking about:
"The Web That Wasn't"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"Google Tech Talks October, 23 2007
For most of us who work on the