TIL about Douglas Engelbart, such a visionary that even Occam's razor says he ought to be a time traveller.
Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
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Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#22Instead of Ted Nelson telling the world what everyone can learn from him, I would like to hear him talk about what he learned from the real world. Xanadu is probably the biggest vaporware in the history of computing. Maybe some lessons learned about how he had all these “brilliant” ideas but never actually made something that actual people actually use. But that would require humility, introspection, and self-awarene…
History is full of people who considered themselves geniuses. Some of them really were.
Nelson got his ideas out there and other people used them in various ways, often without giving him credit. Bill Atkinson was one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquNpWdf9vg) and he wasn't the first.
at 1:35 in that video, Gary Kildall does give him credit, along with Doug Engelbart.
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#23A glut of very affordable, yet relevant, books from days of yore--many scanned, some still retained as physical treasures--marks the nascent field of computer science.
I read and re-read parts of "Principles of Program Design" (1975) and type little C programs from King's "Modern C" (1996).
The new wonders may come from familiarity with bare metal, algorithms, and the desire to build the "virtual machine" to solve each problem.
It's a slow process. I draw out the boxes and stare blearily at COBOL examples. M.A. Jackson is the invisible guide, silent but for his proclamations.
Each (non-UML) schematic logic accompanied by a single anxious thought:
Am I doing this right?
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#24Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#25I’m sad that we no longer have any Ted Nelson’s in the world of tech. There’s simply too much money now for smart people to waste their time on “interesting” things.
First off, we still have THE Ted Nelson! He's old but he ain't dead yet.
(He might even read this thread!?)
- - - -
There are some modern day Ted Nelsons:
Sean Mcdirmid comes to mind. (He's on HN. Dude, didn't you used to have a blog?)
https://www.youtube.com/user/seanmcdirmid
https://confengine.com/user/sean-mcdirmid
Or Jonathan Edwards https://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm
There's the folks behind Enso/Luna https://enso.org/ among others. Jef Raskin's son Asa is still doing things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#26Instead of Ted Nelson telling the world what everyone can learn from him, I would like to hear him talk about what he learned from the real world. Xanadu is probably the biggest vaporware in the history of computing. Maybe some lessons learned about how he had all these “brilliant” ideas but never actually made something that actual people actually use. But that would require humility, introspection, and self-awarene…
I agree except for that last sentence. If you were to delete it the whole comment would be much better, IMO.
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then again as Steve Jobs said: “ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”
> ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Maybe if you only have a business focus. He was apparently not interested in fundamental research.
Even in research you have to "do" something with an idea, at least hang your hat on a specific prediction, or carry out the experiment.
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#28I’m sad that we no longer have any Ted Nelson’s in the world of tech. There’s simply too much money now for smart people to waste their time on “interesting” things.
There's a whole subculture of super cool developers who take inspiration from the whole Ted Nelson, Alan Kay/PARC, Douglas Engelbart, Bret Victor branch of software history; ie, visionaries.
Two are listed below, but there are many more. Nicky case is one of the most well known ones, Bret Victor himself is very well known and very active. There're also a lot of lesser known people in the space,
- Patrick Dubroy: wrote Ohm, makes cool stuff
- @azlenelza on Twitter
- @codexeditor on Twitter: He's building by far the most professional, serious and very very inventive digitised text... system? I have no idea what to call it. It's far far beyond what Roam, Obsidian etc can do. I think Ted would love to have a conversation with this guy. It goes deep in all directions.
- Andy Matuschak is worth mentioning. Goes deep into learning and memory research, and building tools around this.
- Tudor Girba @girba on twitter, makes moldable software environments: Tl;dr, tools to make custom IDEs in seconds to minutes that fit your current task perfectly. Very interesting stuff built on Pharo smalltalk
- Omar @rsnous on Twitter, posts thought experiments about weird interactions with computers multiple times per week. Sometimes cool ideas come out of it :
Of course not all of these people are or will be visionaries of the same level as Ted, but these are all people working to experiment with the status quo, or step out of it completely.
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Maybe if you only have a business focus. He was apparently not interested in fundamental research.
Even in research you have to "do" something with an idea, at least hang your hat on a specific prediction, or carry out the experiment.
There is quite a difference between fundamental and applied research.
Re: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
#30The subtitle says Ted was the inventor of hypertext, but in the interview he credits Doug Engelbart. You can hear him say it if you listen from 4:30 to 4:45. "We thought computing would be artisanal. We did not imagine great monopolies." Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the "we" refers to). "... artistic expression ..." Reminds me a…
> Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the "we" refers to).
To unwrap that, the “power” of great efficiencies of scale, but also “weakness” from the lack of adaptability and resilience inherent to monocultures.
The jury is still out on which way the balance swings — especially because the former manifests in “typical events” while the latter manifests in “tail events”. Post pandemic disruptions of logistical supply chains and supply-chain vulnerabilities in software, I think folks seem to (or at least ought to) be far more apprehensive of blindly submitting to network effects.
In summary, it’s surprising to me that even in hindsight people seem so enamored with network effects to be blind to the cons.