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Hypertext Creator: Structure of the Web 'Completely Wrong'
angry tapir writes "The creator of hypertext has criticized the design of the World Wide Web, saying that Tim Berners-Lee's creation is 'completely wrong,' and that Windows, Macintosh and Linux have 'exactly the same' approach to computing. Ted Nelson, founder of first hypertext project, Project Xanadu, went on to say, 'It is a strange, distorted, peculiar and difficult limited system... the browser is built around invisible links — you can see something to click on but you’ve got nowhere else to go.'"
You mean that thing that's supposed to be superior to the World Wide Web, but that's been in development hell for the last fifty years? (Duke Nukem Forever, most delayed software ever? Ha.) Someone needs to tell this guy that it doesn't matter how superior your invention is if no one ever sees it. Like Steve Jobs said, "Real artists ship."
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Practically everything we take for granted about the Internet was what I'd call a "WTF proposition" when it was proposed.
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His concept is effectively a free-form multi-document interface where hyperlinks open into a new window. That description doesn't do it justice though. Think of it like each block of content, each paragraph, each page, each image, is not limited to the context which it is in. You can do, as the quote suggest, strike out some content that is between the two pieces you want, or branch out diagnally.
Think if it more like a 6 degrees of Kevin Baccon interface, only for every piece of content. Wikipedia is the most obvious example of where it would be useful. Being able to see the content of mid-sentence links with out having to leave the page you are on.
It's a pretty cool concept, but not big enough (IMO) to displace the current browsing experience.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
He is a genius. We just can't even comprehend what it is he wants to say.
Actually, I think he is smoking crack. I didn't even get past the headline before it stopped making any sense.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Correction, what Xanadu "is" ;)
http://www.xanadu.com/
It's basically an MDI for browsing where links open horrizontally and scroll with the page. It's a clugy attempt at what he is talking about.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
6. Every document can contain links of any type including virtual copies ("transclusions") to any other document in the system accessible to its owner.
Youtube demo (the actual demo starts at about 3:15)
No one can be told what Project Xanadu is. You have to see it for yourself. I found that video on youtube of Ted Nelson showing off Xanadu a few years ago.
He might be a mad man, but he's an interesting madman.
If you think of Xanadu as a highly available redundant P2P document system mixing in TBL's Semantic Web and adding more automation, you get a bit closer to what Ted Nelson was trying to do with Xanadu.
http://xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html
Section two of the FAQ covers what a Xanadu system was supposed to entail.
This article (originally on Wired) covers some of the controversies that have broiled up:
http://aether.com/archives/the_curse_of_xanadu.html
If you can find Nelson's 1982 Datamation article it is pretty interesting but I couldn't find it anymore after some quick Google searches (YMMV).
In one of Asimov's books he describes doing research/reading in the Imperial Library of Trantor; I think that's what this guy is trying to describe. Links become basically infinite depth background trees on any word or phrase or sentence or paragraph or whatever level you want.
Which would be amazing, in an academic context. But I'm not sure it would be more useful in a wider context than what we have now.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Your statement is not factually accurate. Ted Nelson has been sitting in his ivory tower producing nothing for 50 years, not 20.
I think what he's suggesting is this:
Many documents are composed of parts of other documents. If I write an essay I might quote from source texts, scientific papers, other people's work on the subject, interviews I've conducted, etc, and I'll add my own ideas around this. At the moment, I duplicate (retype) any source material and provide a link to it. The material I've linked to doesn't automatically link back. Instead, I could make a link using his system which includes the text from the version of the document I look at, and provides a two-way link.
It's a nice idea, but unless you can make it easy to create documents with all these links (and ensure they don't need any maintenance) I don't see how it would catch on.
Wikipedia's software is close in some respects -- you can include pages (but not, AFAIIA, selected bits of pages) in other pages. There aren't links in the UI, but it would be trivial to add them.
So... the Timecube guy is going to win?
I think the bigger problem with his system is that it would only work if all the source material was kept on the same server. Or at least if there was a common document provider to serve it.
The way the web works today doesn't allow this. Sure, you could fetch some text part from a remote server somewhere, but what if that site goes down? Or what if your document contains 100 snippets from 100 servers? Just imagine the load times.
At least now, when presented with a hyperlink, the user has an expectation that it might be broken, but even then the locally stored text remains accessible.
And then we didn't even mention copyrights...
If you look at the rules he proposes you'll see that half of them are about restricting access and creating profit venues for the publishers.
Ted Nelson's view is a web where you have to pay for each page you visit. We have seen too much of this lately
It has been reported that United States senator Jon Kyl has had all ten of his fingers replaced with Vienna sausages. It was also reported that that report was not intended to be factually accurate.