Web Inventors

Week 12LCC 2700: Intro to Computational MediaSpring 2005David Jimison

Ted Nelson

“Here is the right way to do something by computer: first figure out what you really want to do and think

about, instead of staying bogged down in what you usually do and think about when you don’t use a computer.”- Nelson

Thinking about computers - 1965

• Digital Equipment Corporation, introduces the first minicomputer, which, compared with the mainframe computer, is simple to operate and low cost ($18,000). It has 4K memory.

• Large amounts of information with few ways to access

Direction of computers

• Hierarchical chain of command• Rigid notions of text and information• Computer systems were largely used exclusively

for military and advanced research applications• Associated with the elite of society • How can this be changed?• “In 1974, computers were oppressive devicesin far-off

airconditioned places.Now you can be oppressed by computers in your own living room.” - Nelson

How does Nelson change computers?

• Takes a philosophical and sociological approach to computers

• Knowledge Transference: taking techniques, approaches, and information from one field and applying it to another

• Questions the true structure of the computer

Ted Nelson: Hypertext (1965)

• “A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing , and the Indeterminate”

• Wedded V. Bush’s memex to digital technology, calling for digital associationist encyclopedic information resource

• Coined the term “hypertext”• Architecture of Entry, List, Link• Subversion of hierarchy part of 1960’s frame of mind• Systems became overly complex and never

implemented (Xanadu)

Nelson’s definition of hypertext (1965)

A body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represened on paper. It may contain summaries, or maps of its contents and their interrelations; it may contain annotations, additions and footnotes from scholars who have examined it….Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world’s written knowledge. However its internal file structure would have to be built to accept growth, change and complex informational arrangements.

Xanadu

• Nelson began working on non-sequential writing while a graduate student at Harvard

• Name references Samuel Coleridge’s opium induced poem Kubla Khan

• Published his ideas in 1974 as Computer Lib/Dream Machine

• Formed a group to work on the project, which was eventually funded as Autodesk by Xerox Parc

• After the group’s collapse, released the Xanadu code as a means to overturn software patents

• http://xanadu.com/tech/

Xanadu

• The Xanadu model has always been very simple: make content available with certain permissions; then distribute and maintain documents simply as lists of these contents, to be filled in by the browser (in the same way that browsers now fill in GIFs).  This list of contents is effectively a virtual file of contents to be sent for and how to put them together.

Nelson against the Web

• “HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management. “ - Nelson

• Xanadu allows for files to contain each other, known as transclusion

• Considered information retrieval similar to RSS feeds

• Nelson’s Xanadu is considered to have been too large of a scope, and still does not work.