sideb0ardon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”
I love the Ted Nelson "Computers For Cynics" series - link to this video He is kinda awesome in Herzog's recent 'Lo and Behold' too.
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#tednelson#computersforcynics#gui
Computers for Cynics 0 - The Myth of Technology
TheTedNelson
10K subscribers • 8 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2024.
- Presented by Ted Nelson, pioneer of hypertext
- An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.
Beginner. No background in the topic needed.
33K views14 years ago3 recommendations
History and cultureSoftware designHistory of computingThe tech industry
Ted Nelson argues that modern computer interfaces and operating systems are merely packaging and conventions rather than true technology.
Ted Nelson casts doubt on Computer Basics.Why it's here
3 people recommend thisWhat people say. Recommended as a classic reframing of computing history that exposes the arbitrariness of many foundational user interface decisions.
enkiv2on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”
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: link to 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 alway…
drewcooon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The accidental tyranny of user interfaces”
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. link to this video
oscilloscopeon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Ted Nelson”
Ted Nelson created a YouTube series, Computers for Cynics, which is his history of modern computing technology. link to this video In one amusing video, he proposes that Satoshi Nakomoto, the creator of Bitcoin, is a pseudonym used by Shinichi Mochizuki, the mathematician who found a proof for the abc conjecture with his inter-universal geometry. link link link
fmoralescon Hacker News • Mentions
On “GNU/kWindows”
…t 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". ( link to this video )…
0x69420on Hacker News • Mentions
On “SonoBus: High-quality, low-latency peer-to-peer audio”
"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 w…