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Xanadu Software Released After 54 Years In the Making
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.'"
I'll hold out for version 2.0 when they work the bugs out.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
anyone would beat the Duke Nukem Forever record
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.
Alternately titled "Project Xanadu Forever".
Dark Reflection
Anyone see the actual document before it was /.ed?
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
You missed something. This was the fundamental, original idea that TBL made happen as the Web. Hypertext documents linking to one another across servers and authors, across the world. 10 years ago, I would have said that this was naive academic work, and TBL got it right with the very flexible WWW we have today.
While the "all links are backlinks too" idea was neat, and most blogs want to work that way and have to do extra work to make it so, it's the core principle of "not censorable" really shines through.
I guess "Wikipedia in the wild early days before deletionism" is the closest to this idea, if Wikipedia had no central servers for offended governments to target. But missing from this still-academic project is the strong anonymity needed for free speech in the modern world, plus real hardening against malicious governments.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
People it is a treasure! I think people should go through the documentation of this project carefully. It predates the entire internet, but talks about links between documents, references, referees etc. I think we can find prior art by the tons here. We might be able to invalidate many many trivial patents on the internet and web pages here.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There is a problem that Xanadu really solves which is when you want to cite someone else's text verbatim... its a direct and visual link back to the source.. so it's clear whose words are being used, where they come from and there is an easy Color coded and visual LINK to see them in full context.. HMTL named hyperlinks can accomplish much of the same however... the interface for Xanadu is much more fluid...
i would enjoy writing with Xanadu...
http://www.hawknest.com/
It predates the entire internet, but talks about links between documents, references, referees etc.
Talk is not the same thing as a workable solution. Particularly when applied to systems that do not yet exist.
http://slashdot.org/story/99/0...
Come on guys, get it together.
I don't see the connection between the two... can you explain it using a car analogy?
Koans and fables for the software engineer
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.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The issue of tracking entities that quote your resource is not really the size of a problem that demands this much answer.
IIRC, the original design included a large number of other features that became nonsensical as modern conventions for information arrived:
- We do not require licensing or micropayment for quoting text or speech. The www follows free-speech by default, and tools must be built on top to restrict things. (Among many reasons why not: There is no permanent trust-able entity for enforcement)
- There is a vastly larger usage of linking than quote usage (links jump but also embed)
- Commercial licensing of text, images and video is still required but the infrastructure to enforce it has to constantly differentiate by usage and intent (satire, education), not mere presence or absence. (YouTube's big review process...)
- There is no permanent barrier to building a free side-channel for information that would otherwise be licensed. (P2P File Sharing, etc)
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You are a fucking Yugo.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh come on, I think you're being over harsh there... He didn't say that his analogy exploded into pieces on impact whilst shunting the main weight of the argument into the body cavity of the oncoming traffic.
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
See "The Skills of Xanadu", as text: http://books.google.com/books?...
and as audio: https://archive.org/details/pr...
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...
"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?...
"Google Tech Talks October, 23 2007
For most of us who work on the
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.