Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

I recently read Ben Shneiderman's review of Ted Nelson's Computer Lib (1974) in his list of books that were key influences on his professional and personal life, and his criticism of Ted rings true.

His criticisms are fair and well thought out, and I definitely agree with him in this case, both his high praise of Ted and his books and other work, and his criticism of him for not joining the party the rest of the wide world is having on the real web, as deeply flawed as it is:

https://eagereyes.org/influences/ben-shneiderman

>Ted Nelson’s clever and innovative Computer Lib (1974) book and other writings demonstrated what truly innovative thinking was like. I’ve had the chance to meet Ted occasionally and am constantly impressed by his innovative thinking, but I am among those who wish he would link himself more closely to practical realities. Maybe that is too pedestrian of me, but it reflects my desire to be innovative while also having an impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines

>Computer Lib/Dream Machines is a 1974 book by Ted Nelson, printed as a two-front-cover paperback to indicate its "intertwingled" nature. Originally self-published by Nelson, it was republished with a foreword by Stewart Brand in 1987 by Microsoft Press.

Ben Shneiderman is quite positive and excellent at explaining and sharing and selling his impactful ideas, which are based on empirical research and user testing. (For example, Berners-Lee used his recommended light blue colors for links, which user studies demonstrated had the best balance of visibility without disrupting reading.)

http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/about.html

>The direct manipulation concepts led Ben Shneiderman and his students to develop the interface for the hyperlink. Originally called "embedded menus" empirical evaluations appeared in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies in January 1986 and in the Communications of the ACM in April 1986. These projects led to the commercially successful Hyperties hypermedia system, which was produced by Cognetics Corp., Princeton Junction, NJ. Hyperties was used to produce the world's first electronic journal, the July 1988 issue of the Communications of the ACM. The ACM sold 4000+ copies under the title Hypertext on Hypertext.

>Hypertext on Hypertext: World’s first electronic journal for CACM, July 1988

>This electronic journal was cited in Tim Berners-Lee's Spring 1989 manifesto http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html for the web as the source of the "hot spots" or links idea. Berners-Lee even used our recommended light blue colors for links, which our user studies demonstrated had the best balance of visibility without disrupting reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink#History

>In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush's concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to a theoretical proprietary worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Though Nelson's Xanadu Corporation was eventually funded by Autodesk in the 1980s, it never created this proprietary public-access network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within a single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968), with NLS. Ben Shneiderman working with graduate student Dan Ostroff designed and implemented the highlighted link in the HyperTIES system in 1983. HyperTIES was used to produce the world's first electronic journal, the July 1988 Communications of ACM, which was cited as the source for the link concept in Tim Berners-Lee's Spring 1989 manifesto for the Web. In 1988, Ben Shneiderman and Greg Kearsley used HyperTIES to publish "Hypertext Hands-On!", the world's first electronic book.

Here's more I wrote about Xanadu a long time ago, after reviewing the open source code (Smalltalk machine translated to C++!) that they released in 1999:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16224154

>I think his biggest problem is that he refuses to collaborate with other people, or build on top of current technology. He's had a lot of great important inspirational ideas, but his implementation of those ideas didn't go anywhere, he's angry and bitter, and he hasn't bothered re-implementing them with any of the "inferior technologies" that he rejects.

>Back in 1999, project Xanadu released their source code as open source. It was a classic example of "open sourcing" something that was never going to ship otherwise, and that nobody could actually use or improve, just to get some attention ("open source" was a huge fad at the time).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/08/27/web_precursor_xanadu...

>Register believe it or not factoid: Nelson's book Computer Lib was at one point published by Microsoft Press. Oh yes. ®

>They originally wrote Xanadu in Smalltalk, then implemented a Smalltalk to C++ compiler, and finally they released the machine generated output of that compiler, which was unreadable and practically useless. It completely missed the point and purpose of "open source software".

>I looked at the code when it was released in 1999 and wrote up some initial reactions that Dave Winer asked me to post to his UserLand Frontier discussion group:

http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010163....

http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010164....

http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010165....

http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010166....

http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010167....

>A few excerpts (remember I wrote this in 1999 so some of the examples are dated):

[continued in old hn thread here:]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16224154

Ted Nelson's best-known and most influential contribution was not Xanadu, but his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which appeared in 1974. Doesn't anyone remember this? It was ubiquitous at the beginning of the personal computer era. This self-published book was very much of its time - it had the same oversize-on-newsprint format and DIY look as the Whole Earth Catalog, which was popular at the same time. It was important because it pursuasively made the case that computing was about to become a medium for self-expresson - a "dream machine" - that was an unheard-of concept at the time. You can use a computer to produce graphics! To play games! How about that! He told about Sutherland's Sketchpad and Englebart's NLS and at a time when these were completely invisible to almost everyone. Xanadu gets a few pages in the book but it is not at all a work of self-promotion - almost the whole book is about the work of others. It's a survey of the computing scene right before personal computers appeared. This book was very timely and I think it provided a lot of inspiration for the personal computer movement. It made you want to try out computing! It has one page about microprocessors: "Here they come ... Microprocessors are what's happening" (the MITS Altair appeared the next year, in 1975).

I think Ted Nelson is one of those people whose main effects are through their influence on others, rather than through what they directly produce themselves.

Yes, as a Belgian myself I'm aware of his work, but it was the work of Bush that directly inspired Ted, Douglas etc. Of course Bush's work builds on top of others as I'm sure Otlet will also have had his predecessors.

Interesting, I will take another look at the thesis with this in mind. Evaluating work is hard with limited context!

i.e. basically what Taleb mentioned repeatedly in his books: The power of capitalism lies in its capability to allow people to freely explore all sorts of potential ideas. Many, or even most of them will fail, but some of them will get lucky and hit the mark. Many inventions/breakthroughs throughout the history were achieved "by accident" instead of intentionally/in a planned manner.