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Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

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Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#111

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

dustingetz wrote: post #108
thesausageking wrote: post #102

"If I hadn't snubbed Jobs and Woz, I might've been the Jef Raskin of Apple" That quote made me look up who Ted Nelson was. His most notable project that I see is Xanadu which Wired described as "the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing". Started in 1960, it didn't ship a working version until 2014. I don't disagree that the Media Lab often overhypes things. But you need to be able to sell you…

it’s true though, we pretend to attribute success to merit but really it’s all just the butterfly effect and being in the right place at the right time.

In enterprise it's might makes right.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#112

Post by db48x »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #107

I don't think many people would argue that Nelson isn't a visionary, but when push comes to shove, there is an uncomfortable amount of truth in Steve Jobs's oft-cited quip, "Real artists ship." After 50 years, Project Xanadu not only isn't in a production-ready state, the "best demo" available is described on the xanadu.com web site as "beyond fixing." The sample EDL documents on the site do a good job of demonstrati…

Ted's original vision for Xanadu was fairly complete. As I recall, documents would have been effectively immutable; every change you made would publish a new version, and all old versions would remain accessible. Every link and transclusion went to a specific version, so they would never break. If the page you were transcluding changed, you could obviously opt to update your own page to transclude the new version, if you wanted. The exact details for payments were never worked out as far as I know, but they would have required every user and every publisher to have a single specific identity which would be transmitted along with every document and request for a document. I'm fairly glad that didn't happen, at any rate.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#113

Post by tudorw »

floren wrote: post #73
tudorw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most ridiculous recurring accusation against someone who has championed the human-oriented use of computers since day one and it's partly his work that means we have PCs at all. So, firstly, Ted can program, secondly, there are versions of Xanadu and ZigZag you can download and try. Bill Lowe of IBM fame on Ted; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kasu0BhRFGo A zigzag demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yF…

I've never seen any indication that Ted has implemented any of his own projects. ZigZag's first demo appears to have been built by Andrew Pam, and a later Java implementation was done by some others.[1] The page for the Xanadu demo a sibling comment mentions says "The enthusiastic and talented programmer, Rob Smith, of Manchester England, did a beautiful job combining a lot of our ideas" but "Unfortunately this made…

I think my consistent issue is with this recurring idea that the person behind the idea should be able to implement it. Go read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfilade_(Xanadu)

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#114

Post by mstade »

tomp wrote: post #69
diydsp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're really selling the image of technological progress. That's such a broad brushstroke. Consider, for example, Echo Nest's research in machine listening in Barry Vercoe's Music, Mind and Machine group. This all made it into Spotify when they acquired Echo Nest. His work led and pushed other researchers in the field at ISMIR, etc. Hard to downplay the impact of Spotify on our culture. This is not "hokum." And as…

Spotify's biggest impact is legal "free" music. It's not even a technological innovation (in fact, their technology sucks - I can't even reorder or duplicate playlists!), it's just a legal innovation (or "innovation", as Uber would say).

Back in about 2007-2008 sometime I was given an invite to Spotify, when it was still very much in stealth mode. In Stockholm at the time it was the talk of the town in hip web agency circles, and the question of why it wasn't a publicly available product tended to come up. Someone told me that the main reason they were in stealth mode still, despite having a pretty solid product at the time, was that the entire library of music was ripped off of CDs and not licensed, and they were working towards getting the labels on board.

The explanation made sense to me and would support your point of view, but sadly I don't know if it's actually true as I heard it from someone not actually working for Spotify.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#115

Post by wpietri »

thesausageking wrote: post #102

"If I hadn't snubbed Jobs and Woz, I might've been the Jef Raskin of Apple" That quote made me look up who Ted Nelson was. His most notable project that I see is Xanadu which Wired described as "the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing". Started in 1960, it didn't ship a working version until 2014. I don't disagree that the Media Lab often overhypes things. But you need to be able to sell you…

> But you need to be able to sell your ideas and get people excited about them to have an impact on the world.

This is true. But there's a notional dial I think about. It's labeled "effort distribution". The left end says "substance" and the right end says "hype".

I've come to accept that 0% hype is a setting that mostly doesn't work. You need to make some people aware of your work, or you'll never get word of mouth. So let's say 5%. And really, you have to go higher than that, because you need to compete some with other people's hype. So maybe 10%?

The trouble is that hype is an arms race. So if the Media Lab is hoovering up money by overhyping things, then a) that money is being pulled from more substance-focused efforts, and b) to compete, now everybody has to burn more time on hype. Except funders, of course, who have to burn more time and money hoping to see through hype.

I can almost accept this in commerce, where we burn hundreds of billions of dollars per year on this arms race via advertising, PR, etc. But it makes me especially sad to see it happening in research.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#116

Post by wpietri »

appleflaxen wrote: post #79
EthanHeilman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing wrong with professors communicating the value of what they are building as effectively as possible. If you believe a problem is an important problem to solve then you should work hard to convince other people it is important. >As for the Media Lab, they're really selling the image of technological progress. Disclaimer: I've worked with researchers at the DCI group in the media lab on hash function crypt…

> The media lab is made up of a large number of research teams doing very different stuff. It is unfair to just say "the media lab does X or operates like X". Look at the research from the DCI group at the media on zero knowledge proofs systems [0], hash-based accumulators [1], or work on Ring Signatures [2]. I have no dog in the fight, but I feel like if any entity is branding itself as a discrete entity, then you t…

Exactly. I really don't like the rhetorical trick of taking a generalization and disputing it because it's not absolute. Especially when, as you say, the people involved have chosen to carry that banner proudly.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#117

Post by sdellis »

proximitysauce wrote: post #66
diydsp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're really selling the image of technological progress. That's such a broad brushstroke. Consider, for example, Echo Nest's research in machine listening in Barry Vercoe's Music, Mind and Machine group. This all made it into Spotify when they acquired Echo Nest. His work led and pushed other researchers in the field at ISMIR, etc. Hard to downplay the impact of Spotify on our culture. This is not "hokum." And as…

Spotify acquired Echo Nest in 2014. Spotify was already wildly successful at that point, and were latest in a long line of music streaming services that came before them. They also already had recommendations. It was basically an acquihire and most of the team has already left.

This is not true. There are recommendation algorithms and there are recommendation algorithms. Spotify's VP of Engineering in the US contacted me in July 2011 due to my work with EchoNest and wanted to know what my experience was. His story was that Spotify was interested in longtail music discovery and recommendation algorithms. I still have my correspondence with him and I'm happy to share if you need more proof.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#118

Post by vanderZwan »

wpietri wrote: post #115
thesausageking wrote: post #102

"If I hadn't snubbed Jobs and Woz, I might've been the Jef Raskin of Apple" That quote made me look up who Ted Nelson was. His most notable project that I see is Xanadu which Wired described as "the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing". Started in 1960, it didn't ship a working version until 2014. I don't disagree that the Media Lab often overhypes things. But you need to be able to sell you…

> But you need to be able to sell your ideas and get people excited about them to have an impact on the world. This is true. But there's a notional dial I think about. It's labeled "effort distribution". The left end says "substance" and the right end says "hype". I've come to accept that 0% hype is a setting that mostly doesn't work. You need to make some people aware of your work, or you'll never get word of mouth.…

> I can almost accept this in commerce, where we burn hundreds of billions of dollars per year on this arms race via advertising, PR, etc.

I dunno, given that marketing is almost certainly overhyping marketing the amount of human effort wasted on this is kind of depressing too

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#119

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #116
appleflaxen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The media lab is made up of a large number of research teams doing very different stuff. It is unfair to just say "the media lab does X or operates like X". Look at the research from the DCI group at the media on zero knowledge proofs systems [0], hash-based accumulators [1], or work on Ring Signatures [2]. I have no dog in the fight, but I feel like if any entity is branding itself as a discrete entity, then you t…

Exactly. I really don't like the rhetorical trick of taking a generalization and disputing it because it's not absolute. Especially when, as you say, the people involved have chosen to carry that banner proudly.

[deleted]

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#120

Post by proximitysauce »

sdellis wrote: post #117
proximitysauce wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify acquired Echo Nest in 2014. Spotify was already wildly successful at that point, and were latest in a long line of music streaming services that came before them. They also already had recommendations. It was basically an acquihire and most of the team has already left.

This is not true. There are recommendation algorithms and there are recommendation algorithms. Spotify's VP of Engineering in the US contacted me in July 2011 due to my work with EchoNest and wanted to know what my experience was. His story was that Spotify was interested in longtail music discovery and recommendation algorithms. I still have my correspondence with him and I'm happy to share if you need more proof.

I believe that they wanted to hire you.

There were a ton of music recommendations available at the time. Every music service had them: Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Last.fm, Mog, iTunes, Grooveshark... Echo Nest's weren't even that good. I don't think they had song level recommendations iirc.

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