photonhunter
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2011–2022
7:32 · 84K views · Sep 6, 2008
Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space, his software for representing hypertext in three-dimensional space with linked, referenced content fragments.
Recommended as the shortest way to grasp Nelson's idea of referential content and how the web could have been different.
8 comments from Hacker News
Too many great talks to mention, but if I had to pick one it would be Ted Nelson's few minutes of demonstration of Xanadu. Demonstration is lacking, but what he said about the concept/idea is what stuck with me. Deep and referential(?) content. this video
This video of his seems to give more of a demonstration of his alternative paradigm: this video It's really interesting to see, but in order for any of his idea to actually work you need to rethink the entire operating system it seems - not just the UI. He wants all content to have history, which would fundamentally break copy and paste (one of his points actually). The problem I see with that is you'd still have individual files (actual bits) on the hard drive, just they'd all have some meta content that describes it's origin. Or you'd need some sort of database file system (WinFS). I'd like to see technology trending more this guy's way, but the reality is that the technological challenges seem to be too great at the moment.
Everything you've mentioned completely misses the point - it is not just performance that stinks, it is not just javascript as a language that stinks - all these tools are incremental improvements that completely lack imagination. It is the platform itself - meant to display static text content, being coerced into some frankenstein that requires never-ending libraries and tooling to do what desktop apps did 20 years ago. It is hard to see any other world, so let me link you to a guy to whom it was obvious the web browsers stink decades ago. this video [LINK]
And if you're into watching long videos of what the digital future was supposed to look like, Douglas Adams and Tom Baker made a documentary called Hyperland , and you can watch all 50 minutes of it here: [LINK] or if you want a shorter video, here's Ted Nelson with a short demo of Xanadu as it existed in 2008: this video
this is a great supplement for this: this video a close up demo. His product Xanadu space, I hope it comes to light but the websites aren't looking too hot.