TheTedNelson
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2013–2024
14:46 · 33K views · May 22, 2012
The opening episode of Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics series, in which he casts doubt on conventional accounts of computer basics. He argues that conventions and packaging are mistaken for technology.
HN likes it for Nelson's habit of reframing computing history so that past decisions look arbitrary.
6 comments from Hacker News
Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics probably doesn't contain technical information that's new to any of you, but Ted has a knack for reframing things in ways that make the arbitrariness of certain historical decisions clear: this video On the subject of hypertext, The Web That Wasn't gives a nice history of the idea (for anybody who thinks it starts with TBL -- surprisingly many people!): [LINK] Another reframing-oriented talk is Clay Shirky's "It's not information overload, it's filter failure", which ultimately leads to Shirky suggesting the kinds of user-oriented filtering features that Mastodon has implemented: [LINK] At the intersection of neurology and information science, Peter Watts always has something interesting to say, and as a former marine biologist focusing on the nervous system of starfish, this is absolutely in his wheelhouse: [LINK] This one ("moving away from defensive programming") justified strong typing in a pretty clear way: [LINK] Dan Dennett is just as relevant as Doug Hofstadter when it comes to metacognition: [LINK] Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science starts slow, but if you don't have much of a historical background (like, if you're only vaguely aware of what happened in CS in the 70s), it's a laundry list of things you should look up and be aware of before you start your next project: [LINK] Everybody should understand procedural generation: [LINK] Likewise, since AI is hyped up right now, we should all remind ourselves that IA is a thing too: [LINK] M
The article has a link to a wonderful Ted Nelson series on YouTube that explores that kind of thing in more depth: Computers for Cynics. this video
I love the Ted Nelson "Computers For Cynics" series - this video He is kinda awesome in Herzog's recent 'Lo and Behold' too.
"Part of the myth is thinking that packaging is technology. [...] Microsoft Windows is packaging and conventions. The Macintosh is packaging and conventions. The World Wide Web is packaging and conventions. Underneath these wrappers are the real technologies: TCP/IP, DNS, graphical displays, [...] compression, payment mechanisms, encryption, and so on, but the wrapper is what people see." -Ted Nelson [1] that being said, this is one bit of “packaging” im particularly grateful for -- by complete coincidence, i found it a few days ago, and the fact that the app is free* and available everywhere means i can finally use my phone as an audio receiver for any computer†. now i can listen to talks with slides on a big screen while i cook or clean at antisocial hours, and let the rest of the house sleep without having to buy a bluetooth DAC (or a pair of wireless headphones‡) actually kind of funny -- other solutions to this exist on ios but they are in fact paid apps. same goes for various bits of “packaging” that solve similarly trivial problems, which was a part of growing up with apple stuff that was always deeply insulting to me. i recently came across someone singing the praises of a safari extension for user styles. it is two dollars and ninety nine cents on the mac app store. christ . i hope the grift goes well for the author, we've all got to get by somehow, but good fucking lord * actually free, as in no strings attached, open source, not freemium adware, not sending 24kbps
> The OS without kernel is called "GNU" But that's the thing, nobody other that the GNU people called that an OS worth of a name. I suspect what people call an OS is an standalone set of conventions and packaging that can actually be used to interface between the hardware and the user [0]; so I think Debian is more worth of being called an OS on its own than "GNU userspace - kernel". Same with any other Linux distribution, *BSD variant, Windows and OSX. It was the linux project that made those OSes viable as standalone things (to be fair, the GNU userspace made them viable as usable working platforms for early adopters - but nowadays the role of GNU software in the OS is less central), and people place more weight to that. [0]: I pretty much agree with Ted Nelson about the distinction between "technology" and "packaging". ( this video )