6 ms·

Project Xanadu

103 points by shortlived 7y ago

externalreality 7y ago
WTF
Waterluvian 7y ago
Awful landing page for what seems to be a rather neat idea. Once I dug in and figured out what Xanadu actually is about, I like it a lot.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  "This post cost you $.02 to download and read" ^^ this is the crux of "project xanadu". They wanted a copyright money speedometer to assess every possible transaction. And there was a promise that individuals would have things to say that would go viral as well. I'm glad we got the 'default free' internet, rather than paywall hell for everything.
  - anotheryou 7y ago
    it's much more than just micro-payments
    - teddyh 7y ago
      Micropayments are bad enough, there’s no need to go into more details.
      - anotheryou 7y ago
        I think they are an afterthought on the attribution/quoting mechanism. It's very well worth to look at the rest too. After all it's about the Idea, not the decision to use this specific product (as it's still not in a usable state as far as I can tell).
NikkiA 7y ago
I wonder if Herzog's list of 'sane people in computing' would have jumped to 2 had he met Terry Davis.
hindsightRegret 7y ago
The longest-lived vaporware in history
- inetsee 7y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily label it as vaporware, but I would call it the most disappointing great idea in the history of computing.
  - minxomat 7y ago
    A similar thing happened with Chiron: http://maf.directory/misc/chiron.html http://maf.directory/misc/chiron.html Quote from Donald Knuth for context: "[Floyd] was destined to be disappointed that his dream of a new, near-ideal programming language called Chiron was never to be realized--possibly because he was reluctant to make the sorts of compromises that he saw me making with respect to TEX. Chiron was "an attempt to provide a programming environment in which, to the largest extent possible, one designs a program by designing the process which the program carries out." His plans for the Chiron compiler included novel methods of compile-time error recovery and type matching that have never been published."
- steveeq1 7y ago
  Along with Augment
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  The Copernican revolution had the same problem
zorpner 7y ago
Always interesting to see Xanadu bubble back up. This Wired profile from 1995 (!) is required reading on the history of the project: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/
- jdougan 7y ago
  And this, Ted's response, is also required reading. http://xanadu.com.au/ararat http://xanadu.com.au/ararat
  - xjay 7y ago
    Related: On April 15, 2019, Ted Nelson published a video on Youtube with the title 'Pre-Final Reply to "The Curse of Xanadu" by Gary Wolf / Gory Jackal' [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_-5cGEU9S0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_-5cGEU9S0
dang 7y ago
Alan Kay on Ted Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw Steve Wozniak on Ted Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0Wfs70rV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0Wfs70rV4
patneedham 7y ago
As a resident of New Jersey, I initially thought this was going to be something poking fun at the never-ending construction project formerly known as "Xanadu": https://www.nj.com/bergen/2018/06/american_dream_how_did_a_swath_of_land_in_the_mead.html https://www.nj.com/bergen/2018/06/american_dream_how_did_a_s...
- WalterGR 7y ago
  There are several other options, if we’re discussing what this post isn’t about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu
floren 7y ago
The thing which always puzzled me about Xanadu is that all the attempted implementations seem to have been written by other people. Drawing from Wikipedia: * "In 1972, Cal Daniels completed the first demonstration version of the Xanadu software on a computer Nelson had rented for the purpose * "While at Autodesk, the group, led by Gregory, completed a version of the software, written in the C programming language" * "Then a newer group of programmers [at Autodesk] used the problems with this software as justification to rewrite the software in Smalltalk" From the Xanadu website, regarding their demo XanaduSpace: "The enthusiastic and talented programmer, Rob Smith, of Manchester England, did a beautiful job combining a lot of our ideas [...] John Ohno and Jonathan Kopetz, in Connecticut, spent several years trying to refactor it, but it's beyond fixing-- though as a demo it works just fine." The related ZigZag project: "The first prototype consisting of two character-graphical views was implemented as a Perl module by Andrew Pam in 1997", and there's a more current implementation by some other people( https://sourceforge.net/p/gzigzag/_members/ https://sourceforge.net/p/gzigzag/_members/) called GZigZag If I had been trying for NEARLY 60 YEARS to get a software project out the door, I would have probably started trying to code it myself after the first decade or so! Every time Xanadu comes up, I'm consistently puzzled at how there's never any sign of Nelson actually doing the grunt work of implementation! Edit: here's an interesting link from the ZigZag wikipedia page, where a GZigZag implementor talks about their experience (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715): > The GZigZag project did not materialize Ted's dream system as fast as he liked, so he withdrew his support. At first it just meant that he wasn't participating in discussions as much as he used to. At some later time he asserted his trademark (he had earlier given his permission to use it), and we changed the name to Gzz. Around the same time I was burning out, partially due to Ted's distrust and a large part due to project internal chemistry problems. I bailed out on the project in the end of 2002. > Some time after my departure from the project, Ted asserted his ZigZag patent. The project was forced to abandon all ZigZag related stuff; it was reformed as Fenfire by salvaging those innovations that were not inseparably linked to ZigZag and using RDF as the new core. I hear that's not the last bit of trouble from outside parties the project has run to, but I cannot discuss even the little that I know in public. Suffice to say that even Tuomas burned out on the project eventually.
- 7y ago
sbmassey 7y ago
So to summarise, from what I can gather by browsing the various links, it is essentially the web but with a built in payment system for document publishers, and mechanisms for publishing new documents using sections of existing documents. What did I miss?
- uxp100 7y ago
  Links go both ways (is one way to put it) and the historical aspect I guess.
- theamk 7y ago
  The links never go bad because you should never delete data. Also old versions are kept forever.
  - crististm 7y ago
    How do you reconcile this with the reality of systems breaking? To make it work then you just can't rule out by fiat a hard-disk breakage as one of the simplest adversarial conditions to the model.
    - theamk 7y ago
      Presumably by replicating extensively? How this was supposed to work in 1960 tech (and storage prices), I have no idea. Xanadu is full of missing pieces like this one. There is a reason it never took off.
- slightwinder 7y ago
  I thinks today it's more a wiki-styled CMS with block-based documents for DRM & Payment, plus automatic content-proxys. Though, some of the ideas were around with WWW too, like traceback/pingback for back-communications between documents, or builtin editing in early web-browsers. But the world evolved different.
Animats 7y ago
Previously on Hacker News, only 4 months ago.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635123
chadcmulligan 7y ago
Leo Laporte interviews ted nelson in 2014 https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/199 https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/199
shalabhc 7y ago
Ted Nelson recently did a series of videos on the important ideas in Xanadu. Start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac Also you can buy his classic 'Computer Lib' book here: https://computerlibbook.com/ https://computerlibbook.com/

103 points by shortlived 7y ago

WTF

Awful landing page for what seems to be a rather neat idea. Once I dug in and figured out what Xanadu actually is about, I like it a lot.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
"This post cost you $.02 to download and read" ^^ this is the crux of "project xanadu". They wanted a copyright money speedometer to assess every possible transaction. And there was a promise that individuals would have things to say that would go viral as well. I'm glad we got the 'default free' internet, rather than paywall hell for everything.
- anotheryou 7y ago
  it's much more than just micro-payments
  - teddyh 7y ago
    Micropayments are bad enough, there’s no need to go into more details.
    - anotheryou 7y ago
      I think they are an afterthought on the attribution/quoting mechanism. It's very well worth to look at the rest too. After all it's about the Idea, not the decision to use this specific product (as it's still not in a usable state as far as I can tell).

NikkiA 7y ago

I wonder if Herzog's list of 'sane people in computing' would have jumped to 2 had he met Terry Davis.

hindsightRegret 7y ago

The longest-lived vaporware in history

inetsee 7y ago
I wouldn't necessarily label it as vaporware, but I would call it the most disappointing great idea in the history of computing.
- minxomat 7y ago
  A similar thing happened with Chiron: http://maf.directory/misc/chiron.html http://maf.directory/misc/chiron.html Quote from Donald Knuth for context: "[Floyd] was destined to be disappointed that his dream of a new, near-ideal programming language called Chiron was never to be realized--possibly because he was reluctant to make the sorts of compromises that he saw me making with respect to TEX. Chiron was "an attempt to provide a programming environment in which, to the largest extent possible, one designs a program by designing the process which the program carries out." His plans for the Chiron compiler included novel methods of compile-time error recovery and type matching that have never been published."
steveeq1 7y ago
Along with Augment
8bitsrule 7y ago
The Copernican revolution had the same problem

zorpner 7y ago

Always interesting to see Xanadu bubble back up. This Wired profile from 1995 (!) is required reading on the history of the project: https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

jdougan 7y ago
And this, Ted's response, is also required reading. http://xanadu.com.au/ararat http://xanadu.com.au/ararat
- xjay 7y ago
  Related: On April 15, 2019, Ted Nelson published a video on Youtube with the title 'Pre-Final Reply to "The Curse of Xanadu" by Gary Wolf / Gory Jackal' [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_-5cGEU9S0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_-5cGEU9S0

dang 7y ago

Alan Kay on Ted Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw Steve Wozniak on Ted Nelson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0Wfs70rV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0Wfs70rV4

patneedham 7y ago

As a resident of New Jersey, I initially thought this was going to be something poking fun at the never-ending construction project formerly known as "Xanadu": https://www.nj.com/bergen/2018/06/american_dream_how_did_a_swath_of_land_in_the_mead.html https://www.nj.com/bergen/2018/06/american_dream_how_did_a_s...

WalterGR 7y ago
There are several other options, if we’re discussing what this post isn’t about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu

floren 7y ago

The thing which always puzzled me about Xanadu is that all the attempted implementations seem to have been written by other people. Drawing from Wikipedia: * "In 1972, Cal Daniels completed the first demonstration version of the Xanadu software on a computer Nelson had rented for the purpose * "While at Autodesk, the group, led by Gregory, completed a version of the software, written in the C programming language" * "Then a newer group of programmers [at Autodesk] used the problems with this software as justification to rewrite the software in Smalltalk" From the Xanadu website, regarding their demo XanaduSpace: "The enthusiastic and talented programmer, Rob Smith, of Manchester England, did a beautiful job combining a lot of our ideas [...] John Ohno and Jonathan Kopetz, in Connecticut, spent several years trying to refactor it, but it's beyond fixing-- though as a demo it works just fine." The related ZigZag project: "The first prototype consisting of two character-graphical views was implemented as a Perl module by Andrew Pam in 1997", and there's a more current implementation by some other people( https://sourceforge.net/p/gzigzag/_members/ https://sourceforge.net/p/gzigzag/_members/) called GZigZag If I had been trying for NEARLY 60 YEARS to get a software project out the door, I would have probably started trying to code it myself after the first decade or so! Every time Xanadu comes up, I'm consistently puzzled at how there's never any sign of Nelson actually doing the grunt work of implementation! Edit: here's an interesting link from the ZigZag wikipedia page, where a GZigZag implementor talks about their experience (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715): > The GZigZag project did not materialize Ted's dream system as fast as he liked, so he withdrew his support. At first it just meant that he wasn't participating in discussions as much as he used to. At some later time he asserted his trademark (he had earlier given his permission to use it), and we changed the name to Gzz. Around the same time I was burning out, partially due to Ted's distrust and a large part due to project internal chemistry problems. I bailed out on the project in the end of 2002. > Some time after my departure from the project, Ted asserted his ZigZag patent. The project was forced to abandon all ZigZag related stuff; it was reformed as Fenfire by salvaging those innovations that were not inseparably linked to ZigZag and using RDF as the new core. I hear that's not the last bit of trouble from outside parties the project has run to, but I cannot discuss even the little that I know in public. Suffice to say that even Tuomas burned out on the project eventually.

7y ago

sbmassey 7y ago

So to summarise, from what I can gather by browsing the various links, it is essentially the web but with a built in payment system for document publishers, and mechanisms for publishing new documents using sections of existing documents. What did I miss?

uxp100 7y ago
Links go both ways (is one way to put it) and the historical aspect I guess.
theamk 7y ago
The links never go bad because you should never delete data. Also old versions are kept forever.
- crististm 7y ago
  How do you reconcile this with the reality of systems breaking? To make it work then you just can't rule out by fiat a hard-disk breakage as one of the simplest adversarial conditions to the model.
  - theamk 7y ago
    Presumably by replicating extensively? How this was supposed to work in 1960 tech (and storage prices), I have no idea. Xanadu is full of missing pieces like this one. There is a reason it never took off.
slightwinder 7y ago
I thinks today it's more a wiki-styled CMS with block-based documents for DRM & Payment, plus automatic content-proxys. Though, some of the ideas were around with WWW too, like traceback/pingback for back-communications between documents, or builtin editing in early web-browsers. But the world evolved different.

Animats 7y ago

Previously on Hacker News, only 4 months ago.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635123

chadcmulligan 7y ago

Leo Laporte interviews ted nelson in 2014 https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/199 https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/199

shalabhc 7y ago

Ted Nelson recently did a series of videos on the important ideas in Xanadu. Start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMKy52Intac Also you can buy his classic 'Computer Lib' book here: https://computerlibbook.com/ https://computerlibbook.com/