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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Yet Ted Nelson killed what he created because he wanted a monopoly for himself.

From the start he covered ZigZag and zzstructure with patents and could not get his own software going (I don't think he is very good manager). Several decades later, when some enthusiasts reached out and tried to recreate the ZigZag as open source project GZigZag he eventually screwed up the people involved.

https://www.google.com/patents/US6262736

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715

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I think it's fascinating to listen to baby boomers — not just in tech but in almost every realm — when they talk about the naive optimism of the '60s and '70s. Free love, hippy communes, drug use, tech-as-democratizing force and widespread anti-war sentiment eventually gave way to The War on Drugs, terrorism-fueled paranoia, #MeToo, income inequality and hypercapitalist tech monopolies.

They weren't just profoundly wrong about the future, a lot of them unwittingly helped to create what we have now. And to this day none of the boomers I've talked to seem to understand their role in that series of cultural and economic shifts. I'm generalizing a lot here, but it's a pattern I keep seeing when it comes to the legacy of that particular generation.

Something will be said of us and social networks.

I always remind myself, only half joking, making computers easy to use so that anyone can use one was a huge, huge mistake. :-(

The problem was ceding the technical culture to people who only want TV 2.0. Wanting a new form of entertainment is fundamentally at odds with people wanting to build bicycles for the mind.

One of my managers always said: "To err, is human. To really fsckup you need a computer".

I think GP was pointing towards another known adage - "Any fool can use a computer. Many do."

True believers such as Ted Nelson always want a monopoly centered around themselves. Anyone who disagrees with them is a heretic and is dammed.

Shouldn't that patent expire this year? I see a filing date of Nov 15 1998; by (1) below the basic patent term should be 20 years or Nov 15 2018.

http://www.bpmlegal.com/howtoterm.html

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