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Xanadu: The Forgotten Hypertext

Posted by timothy on from the man-with-the-ultimate-demo dept.

wikinerd writes "Xanadu, a project started in the 1960s to create a deep-linked hypertext infrastructure with xanalogical structures, is still alive, although largely forgotten due to the emergence of the Web."

13 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Was. by nairb774 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I as looking to see what this was all about. Anyone with other resources or mirrors? Doubt the mirrors due to the time the server stood up. nairb774

  2. Not forgotten...ignored by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    wired did an article several years ago on xanadu. no other progress occurred. I'm guessing that the web is good enough that the few concepts that xanadu had over the web today only really interested a handful of people. the web is the 90 percent solution to the problem, and if the other 10 percent really want to *fix* it , then they need to take care of it themselves. You know what they say about the last 10 percent of the project...

    1. Re:Not forgotten...ignored by tricorn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The biggest problem he seemed to have was that he wanted to make sure everyone would get paid the appropriate royalties for each little bit. Click a link to a commentary about a paragraph, you pay micro-cents to the person who wrote the original paragraph, the person who wrote the commentary, and the person who created the link that you used to get there. Without all that, the system would have already been done by now.

  3. Re:Wiki Info by Pirogoeth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now with linkage!

    Thanks, preview button!

    --
    Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
  4. Very much alive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There is a lot going on with Xanadu, and the project has great potential. There is a hard working team that is working on making some of Ted Nelson's dreams come true. Check out http://www.hypertexture.com for some fascinating videos that show just how some of this stuff works. There is also a discussion forum for you to provide you're own 2 cents, and get in touch directly with some of the developers.

  5. Keith Henson Needs Help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    SEE: http://www.keithhenson.org/

    from: kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

    Keith Henson Needs Help (MLP)
    By Baldrson
    Wed Sep 15th, 2004 at 07:42:14 AM EST

    For those who don't know him, Keith Henson co-founded the L5 Society, was
    President of Xanadu Corporation and was a featured character in The Great
    Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge.
    He's about to be deported from Canada to the United States where he faces
    time in the infamous California prison system.

    Recently on the cryonics mailing list Keith Henson issued a plea for help:
    ... at this point I am a "failed refugee." The only thing that can keep me
    from being deported to the US on short notice is an appeal to the Minister
    of Citizenship and Immigration. Her office gets 15,000 letters a week so it
    takes a well known case to reach the level where it gets attention.
    What is going on here and why should anyone care?

    The short story is that Keith has been fighting against Scientology and as
    a result ended up fleeing the United States to Canada to avoid a
    misdemeanor conviction brought against him by Scientologists. Here's the
    prosecuting attorney's speech given the jury on the charges:
    Now, His Honor read to you in the beginning of the case that the defendant
    has been charged with three counts. First count is -- now, these are
    numeric numbers and they mean nothing to you, so I will give you names for
    what they are. The first one is 422, violation of Penal Code Section 422.
    And 664/422 and 422.6. Now I'll give them names. 422 is terrorist threats.
    Now, that conjures up images of Beruit or the Twin Towers bombing, but
    that's not what it means. It just means a threat that causes someone
    terror, that frightens people. That's what Count One is. Count two is
    664/422, is the attempt, the attempt to do the exact same thing, to cause
    to threaten, to attempt to threaten and cause terror or frighten someone.
    And the last count is 422.6. And that's essentially defined as the
    interference with someone's rights guaranteed by the Constitution, their
    civil rights, and in this case the right to practice their religion without
    fear. Essentially 422.6 is a hate crime. Now, let's talk about the first
    count, and we'll go count by count. The first count, 422, again I told you
    was just threats that caused people to be afraid. Essentially the elements
    are these: Number one, there has to be somewhat of a threat. There has to
    be a threat. The person has to intend there to be a threat. And lastly,
    that the victims have a reasonable fear. However, the person doesn't have
    to have to want to carry it out. There has to be no intention to carry out
    the threat.
    Keith's been in Canada for a few years and is trying to remain there as a
    refugee.

    Well, I'll confess my bias. Although Keith and I have known each other
    since the early days of the L5 Society, we have serious disagreements on a
    lot of things -- not the least of which are many opinions about Jews, genes
    and memes etc. More immediately relevant is the fact that I just don't
    "get" Keith's fight against Scientology. Scientologists seem like a joke to
    me and IMHO people who get involved with them suffer about as much but no
    more than people who get involved with New York City nightlife.

    Be that as it may, I personally don't like seeing anyone spend time in a
    US, let alone California, prison system.

    I once refused to testify against a young Hispanic after he had stolen my
    car because, despite the fact that he would be more protected than a man of
    my ethnicity in a California prison, he would nevertheless be subjected to
    a substantial likelihood of being "punked out". That's not my idea of
    justice. Keith is an old guy -- unlikely to be punked out despite the fact
    that he's a non-violent 'white guy' -- bu

  6. Ted's book by ch-chuck · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The software proect may have been too ambitious to be practical (on hardward of the time) but just try to touch his 1974 book for less than $100 (not the Msft reprint).

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  7. There was an Open Source version mentioned on /. by jd · · Score: 2, Interesting
    TN finally opened up the sourcecode for Xanadu under the somewhat bizare name of Udanax. This was covered in a /. story a few years back.


    That server is also dead.


    The last time I checked the source there, there was no evidence of code maintenance, so I don't know if anyone is working on it. There's no Freshmeat record for either Xanadu or Udanax, suggesting that nobody has forked the code.


    Freshmeat does refer to a data organization package by Nielson, called ZigZag, which allowed multi-dimensional data organization, but I don't know enough about it to say if it'll do anything that other data schemes (HDF5, netCDF, XML, ....) don't.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  8. Re:Ted Nelson is brilliant but insane. by virid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would imagine it would have to be visually. Perhaps a menu system showing you the edit choices. After you hilight the selection another menu could provide the continuing branches, etc.

    Once you've finalized your edit it would probably be helpful to have something keeping track of final edits, allowing you to revert to prior edits.

    Interesting but complex. It certainly wouldn't be your average editor.

    --
    "The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
  9. I got the Xanadu manifesto document many years ago by MarkWatson · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I think that it was in the late 1980s - not sure.

    At that time, I was getting into hypertext tools and Xanadu looked good, but if I remember correctly, no code. A very bright sysadmin at PacBell (Karl Wabe) showed me the original WWW stuff at CERN - basically a lot of physics papers linked together. The browser was text based (lynx like). Very cool.

    The great thing about the WWW early on was that software was available - it was shortly seeing the CERN system that our sysadmin at SAIC installed the CERN web server, and those of us who wanted it went crazy with our personal pages. When a graphical web browser was released from the Univ. of IL, then things really went crazy.

    Anyway, my point is that (as far as I remember) I could get Xanadu design documents but no software (apologies if my recollection is wrong - it was a long time ago!) Who knows what would have happened if in the 1980s the Xanadu project released free reference software. Xanadu is very different that the WWW (more like a wiki) but perhaps people would be using both systems today.

  10. Re:Could Xanadu demonstrate prior art? by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't know the particulars, but according to wikipedia, something like this occured in 1988 when Ted released the source code to Xanadu as Project Udanax, to help overturn some patents. Unfortunately, wikipedia provides no further detail on the case(s). I'm not sure if Xanadu had any impact on the BT hyperlink patent case, for instance.

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  11. Douglas Adams Documentary by guzzloid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember watching a BBC documentary about HyperText and the Xanadu system years ago. It was written by Douglas Adams, and featured himself and ex-"Doctor Who" Tom Baker. It discussed the Xanadu system and I remember "Kubla Khan" featuring heavily, using a hypertext system to annotate the poem. The only other things that stick in my memory about the programme are Tom Baker's distinctive (and slightly spooky) voice, and a big stack of televisions in a junkyard... not sure what they were!

    This was all several years before I ever got my hands on the WWW...

    A quick Google search revealed this (includes two Douglas Adams references):
    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/xanadu-faq/

  12. Not centralized by Steve+Witham · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Xanadu design was decentralized among a network of mutual cache/mirror servers, something like Akamai or a server-level bittorrent. There was nothing impractical in the design of it (except getting the software finished!).

    The server network was going to be owned by a single company. When you published, you signed an agreement with that company to let anyone quote you with the provision that you received automatic credit (backward link) & royalties.

    The company itself didn't have censorship or filtering functions, it was more of a common carrier than most ISPs are now.

    I don't see why the single server owner necessarily would lead to a civil liberties disaster. At least, not more than AOL, Verizon and eBay are civil liberties disasters.