How Xanadu Works: technical overview | Hacker News Reader

How Xanadu Works: technical overview

dubinko.info

13 pointsblasdel5 comments

Wired had a long but interesting article about Xanadu back in 1995: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//3.06/xanadu.html?person=... In many ways the story of Xanadu is sad and depressing.

Of course, Xanadu is (or would be) a digital remake of Vannevar Bush's memex: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush Frankly, I'm not sure Ted Nelson has added much to the original concept with Xanadu.

You can download Xanadu(R) Space(TM), a user interface demo, from here: http://xanarama.net/ Windows only, but I got it to work in WINE. Ted Nelson really likes his trademarks, probably because it's as tangible as Xanadu has become after 40 years.

We may have gotten ourselves into a mess with the architecture of the present web, but even so, Nelson’s vision will keep us aspiring toward something better.

No, no, no! The last thing I want is something more Xanadu-like, where everything costs, it's all centrally controlled and all documents are transcluded from each other. The web is, IMHO, a vastly superior idea _because_ of its simplicity and openness.

I worked with Ted for a few years on and off on Zigzag. He's hard to work with, but the rewards (like free dinners in restaurants, free candy, priceless signed copies of all his books, and high table dinners at Oxford), make up for the 'difficult' coding (which isn't that difficult).

Also, I have a PDF of an interview with Ted (which a guy sent me and is incredibly rare) in a 1991 magazine founded by Louis Rossetto (of Wired fame), where Ted chats openly to Louis about Zigzag, a big contrast to the demolition piece in Wired a few years later. I might post this to my website and post a link to HN.

Are you Andrew Pam by chance?

Nope! I know Andrew though. Overall, I hardly got any public credit from Ted for my work, but never mind, that's not why I did it, and he has to prioritize who to credit when everyone chips in a little.

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