5 ms·

Ted Nelson email archive now available

25 points by Hooke 5y ago

constantinum 5y ago
saving a couple of clicks > https://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/correspondents?archiveID=3c3a9a05ef63ab5a797465493b7b200595132396e3e5dc037e47aef1622265fd https://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/correspondents?archiveID=3c... But looks like every email is redacted. I mean 99% redacted. Or is it, something wrong with my browser rendering, that i can't read the text.
- omilu 5y ago
  i can't read it either
  - dang 5y ago
    Nor I. I've emailed the librarian who wrote the article to ask if this is an error or if the emails are not meant to be publicly readable. Edit: got this response - quoting with permission: You are not seeing an error, we only display certain information from email collections online (including the names of correspondents, email header information, and extracted entities) to protect the privacy of third party correspondents contained in the archive. Normally you would be able to access the full email collection in our reading room in Green Library on the Stanford Campus, but unfortunately we are only open to Stanford students, staff, and faculty right now due to our COVID restrictions - we're hoping to open up to the general public soon, but we're not there yet! If you would be interested, I could send specific messages to you via email if you know which ones you would like to read. We would ask you to sign and submit our standard user agreement before receiving the messages and I can send that to you if you would be interested.
haltingproblem 5y ago
I don't get the Ted Nelson hype. What is the unique contribution of Ted Nelson? If it is the idea of hypertext then I fear there were many other who had similar notions. Sincerely interested in someone explaining it.
- kragen 5y ago
  He was the one who inspired a lot of those "many other". Read Computer Lib/Dream Machines and you'll see what the computer world was like at the time. Also, for historians, his archives are extremely valuable.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    I bought a copy when it first came out. I remember sitting in the car outside the bookstore reading it - it was fascinating, I couldn't wait until I got home.
  - jeffbarr 5y ago
    Hello old friend!
    - kragen 5y ago
      Hello Jeff! What's a nice guy like you doing in a degraded place like this?
- teknolog 5y ago
  I happened to be invited to dinner with him on his houseboat in Sausalito about five years ago. He gave me a copy of his "book" and a personal demo of Xanadu running in an emulator. Seems to me he had some pretty innovative ideas early on, but he's not really an engineer and he could never make it work. He was sort of at the right place at the right time to make some kind of impact anyway. He's also really good at self promotion.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  There were a bunch of guys thinking about similar problems, yes, but these guys were the original vanguard of thinking about information organization and dissemination. They were the Notion and Roam Research of the 60s.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  don’t forget teledildonics. from the bio on the site selling his book: “ Nelson co-founded Itty bitty machine company, or "IBM", which was a small computer retail store operating from 1977 to 1980 in Evanston, Illinois. The Itty bitty machine company was one of the few retail stores to sell the original Apple I computer. In 1978 he had a significant impact upon IBM's thinking when he outlined his vision of the potential of personal computing to the team that three years later launched the IBM PC.” (heartily recommend getting a paper copy of the book if you got $120 lying around, it’s really a unique stack of paper) https://computerlibbook.com/pages/about-ted-nelson https://computerlibbook.com/pages/about-ted-nelson
qwertyytrewq778 5y ago
mm

25 points by Hooke 5y ago

saving a couple of clicks > https://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/correspondents?archiveID=3c3a9a05ef63ab5a797465493b7b200595132396e3e5dc037e47aef1622265fd https://epadd.stanford.edu/epadd/correspondents?archiveID=3c... But looks like every email is redacted. I mean 99% redacted. Or is it, something wrong with my browser rendering, that i can't read the text.

omilu 5y ago
i can't read it either
- dang 5y ago
  Nor I. I've emailed the librarian who wrote the article to ask if this is an error or if the emails are not meant to be publicly readable. Edit: got this response - quoting with permission: You are not seeing an error, we only display certain information from email collections online (including the names of correspondents, email header information, and extracted entities) to protect the privacy of third party correspondents contained in the archive. Normally you would be able to access the full email collection in our reading room in Green Library on the Stanford Campus, but unfortunately we are only open to Stanford students, staff, and faculty right now due to our COVID restrictions - we're hoping to open up to the general public soon, but we're not there yet! If you would be interested, I could send specific messages to you via email if you know which ones you would like to read. We would ask you to sign and submit our standard user agreement before receiving the messages and I can send that to you if you would be interested.

haltingproblem 5y ago

I don't get the Ted Nelson hype. What is the unique contribution of Ted Nelson? If it is the idea of hypertext then I fear there were many other who had similar notions. Sincerely interested in someone explaining it.

kragen 5y ago
He was the one who inspired a lot of those "many other". Read Computer Lib/Dream Machines and you'll see what the computer world was like at the time. Also, for historians, his archives are extremely valuable.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  I bought a copy when it first came out. I remember sitting in the car outside the bookstore reading it - it was fascinating, I couldn't wait until I got home.
- jeffbarr 5y ago
  Hello old friend!
  - kragen 5y ago
    Hello Jeff! What's a nice guy like you doing in a degraded place like this?
teknolog 5y ago
I happened to be invited to dinner with him on his houseboat in Sausalito about five years ago. He gave me a copy of his "book" and a personal demo of Xanadu running in an emulator. Seems to me he had some pretty innovative ideas early on, but he's not really an engineer and he could never make it work. He was sort of at the right place at the right time to make some kind of impact anyway. He's also really good at self promotion.
spoonjim 5y ago
There were a bunch of guys thinking about similar problems, yes, but these guys were the original vanguard of thinking about information organization and dissemination. They were the Notion and Roam Research of the 60s.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
don’t forget teledildonics. from the bio on the site selling his book: “ Nelson co-founded Itty bitty machine company, or "IBM", which was a small computer retail store operating from 1977 to 1980 in Evanston, Illinois. The Itty bitty machine company was one of the few retail stores to sell the original Apple I computer. In 1978 he had a significant impact upon IBM's thinking when he outlined his vision of the potential of personal computing to the team that three years later launched the IBM PC.” (heartily recommend getting a paper copy of the book if you got $120 lying around, it’s really a unique stack of paper) https://computerlibbook.com/pages/about-ted-nelson https://computerlibbook.com/pages/about-ted-nelson

qwertyytrewq778 5y ago