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#tednelson#xanadu#hypertext

Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space

photonhunter

307 subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 5 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2011 to 2018.
  • Presented by Ted Nelson, creator of Xanadu
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

84K views18 years ago5 recommendations

History and cultureSoftware designHistory of computingSoftware architecturePeople who shaped computing

Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space, his software for representing multi-dimensional, deeply interconnected hypertext.

Ted Nelson demonstrates his Xanadu Space software for representing hypertext as it should be, in three dimensional space. hyperland.com

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers recommend this demo for its visionary, alternative approach to document structure and deep referential hypertext.

Keyframeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

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. link to this video
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sp332on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pictures of the first GUIs from Xerox”

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: link to this video
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michaelbuddyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Content Management by Redefining the Document”

this is a great supplement for this: link to this video a close up demo. His product Xanadu space, I hope it comes to light but the websites aren't looking too hot.
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gum_ina_packageon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ted Nelson: It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC”

This video of his seems to give more of a demonstration of his alternative paradigm: link to 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 se…
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alexashkaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Gradual Programming”

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. link to this video link
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6d0debc071on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Gingko, a tree-document editor”

Zig Zag was meant to represent a very general set of data structures, if you're interested in documents then you, probably, would have a more specific interest in his (very long running) Xanadu project - link - which in some ways is very similar to OP's stuff - link to this video
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nudpiedoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “OpenXanadu”

I hope to see xanadu succeed, even if it is only on some specialized niches. By seeing value on those niches more and more projects and people would understand the benefits of such system and would like to implement it. But I also believe there will be always a space for current webapps, treating links as RPCs against external systems. EDIT: For anyone interested here is Ted Nelson explaining the system in 2008 on an example system implementation of his original idea: link to this video
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jazzyjacksonon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Structpad: notepad-database hybrid that helps you use abstract thinking”

…inal note consists of writing the note and hooking the link. The link facility gives us much more than the attachment of mere odds and ends. It permits fully non-sequential writing, or hypertext. BTW I really like the interface of just typing and moving my cursor around, and how easy it is to pick up a block of text and move it somewhere else. 0 link to this video 1 link A friend of mine is also building a memex 2(1945), as mentioned in the parent. His is a fairly radical DOS interface that he's been keying his thoughts into daily since the 80s, and it's great fun watching him try to remember something 3(2013): in about 5 or 6 keystrokes skipping across the graph of all notes, he's able to fi…
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