TheTedNelson
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2019
47:57 · 26K views · Sep 3, 2017
Ted Nelson, the originator of hypertext and Project Xanadu, gives a personal account at age 80 of his ideals, his career, and how a poor career plan led to discoveries and adventures. It works as an alternative history of personal computing and hypertext.
HN people point to it as Nelson's candid, first-person overview of his life, Xanadu's failure, and the lessons he drew, a historical record from the man himself.
3 comments from Hacker News
Ted gives a great overview of his life and work at [0]. In this, he ascribes the demotion/firing of Xu88's project lead Roger Gregory as the reason it failed to come fruition, and takes credit for the "regrettable" part he played in this. The whole talk is a wonderful high-level overview from Ted's perspective, which is so often warped and misrepresented. Though he admits that he has, at times, been "overwhelmed by bitterness", he doesn't seem to harbor any lasting hostility or malice to anyone, and continues to work on seeing his vision come to life. He identifies many of the mistakes he's made, identifying multiple critical junctures in which Xanadu may have taken off if he had done something better. Strongly recommended, and I'm grateful that he recorded this historical treasure. Far more valuable and significant than any "incredible journey" post-mortem. [0] this video [timestamped to Autodesk discussion for relevance; watch the whole thing]
Ted's sitting across from me right now! He says this article is old, and wanted to link to a video he recently made talking about his life and work, if anyone's interested: this video We're also hosting an ongoing archival project of his junk mail that he's saved over the years: [LINK] (more details on the project: [LINK] )
Yes! There are no serious moves. Nothing in life is really serious, not even death. But I feel like I need to reach some impossible state of ego integrity or ego death or something to actually live by that line of thinking. So instead, I'm moved by fear and contrived seriousness. I want to be successful, or at least successful enough that one day I can spend my 80s seriously and nostalgically navel-gazing to bewildered viewers outside of my social reality, convinced that I am extremely special. [0] :3 0: this video