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I now have two reservations (open questions) about Project Xanadu. Centralization I believe but cannot yet prove that (durable) two-way links require some kin

I now have two reservations (open questions) about Project Xanadu. Centralization I believe but cannot yet prove that (durable) two-way links require some kind of central authority. I was very slow to appreciate that Nelson always intended for Project Xanadu to be centralized (authoritative?). Much like Facebook and AOL. Whole onto themselves. Walled gardens. Being a huge fan of the Xanadu vision (and never understanding the tech or stack), I was disappointed with the Web's one-way links. Now I see that we dodged a bullet. A suspect that an "open" Web and two-way links are mutually incompatible. Tumblers I've always wanted the transclusion feature. But I never fully grokked tumbers, Xanadu's fundamental data structure. I'd done a bit of work with SNMP MIB, which uses OIDs. Honestly, they sucked. But I couldn't think of anything better. Now I suspect the tumbler approach has been mooted by the advances in version control systems. I still want something like purple numbers or xpointers. Some kind of "light weight" tumbler. Not to say the tumbler data structure is itself heavy; just the over reliance on tumblers. So something like tumblers, as needed, when they're a value-add. So intra-document tumblers, not inter-document (eg directory, catalog). And definitely not for document management (workflows, version control). -- Thanks for reading. I write to understand. (And Xanadu is something I've struggled to understand for decades.) Feedback appreciated.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
Central authority is probably necessary if it is an authority on the final word. But I don't think that's as important as it sounds: what's really important is authority on the first word. A distributed system could use a web of trust where each user claims to be the originator of their work, via PGP signature. At that point "authority" is determined by what user identities you consider trustworthy by including them in your web of trust.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Xanadu transclusion would not work without central authorities either. Under current copyright law a web page with instructions that say "paste chapter 2, paragraph 33 of someone else's book here" is not automatically legal. It may be construed as a derivative work. Ted wanted to have copyright licensing and retrieval costs squared away so that when you opened an article with a quote from a book in it, you bought the article, you bought just the quote part of the book, something stitched them together into a document you could see, and everyone involved signed away their right to object to such an arrangement. I suspect the reason why Xanadu wants tumblers is purely because organizing the entire world's knowledge into a single hierarchical number line looks mathematically neat, even though "give me everything in between page 63 of Snow Crash to page 4 of The Lord of The Rings" is not a meaningful question that can be answered. And again, requires a central authority to number catalogs and books so that they can be referenced in this absolutely batshit insane way. IMHO the biggest problem with Xanadu isn't the technical underpinnings, or the disregard for decentralization. It's the UX design, or lack thereof. Having 10 different documents open with a bunch of transclusions and links drawn between them is at best extremely distracting and at worst not at all usable. There's a reason why "spiderweb of documents tied with red string" is a visual shorthand for conspiracy theories. And, again, all that requires a central authority to be putting in the work of tying red string in between all the documents, because nobody actually bothers doing that when writing documents unless threatened with academic or legal sanctions.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

Central authority is probably necessary if it is an authority on the final word. But I don't think that's as important as it sounds: what's really important is authority on the first word. A distributed system could use a web of trust where each user claims to be the originator of their work, via PGP signature. At that point "authority" is determined by what user identities you consider trustworthy by including them in your web of trust.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Xanadu transclusion would not work without central authorities either. Under current copyright law a web page with instructions that say "paste chapter 2, paragraph 33 of someone else's book here" is not automatically legal. It may be construed as a derivative work. Ted wanted to have copyright licensing and retrieval costs squared away so that when you opened an article with a quote from a book in it, you bought the article, you bought just the quote part of the book, something stitched them together into a document you could see, and everyone involved signed away their right to object to such an arrangement. I suspect the reason why Xanadu wants tumblers is purely because organizing the entire world's knowledge into a single hierarchical number line looks mathematically neat, even though "give me everything in between page 63 of Snow Crash to page 4 of The Lord of The Rings" is not a meaningful question that can be answered. And again, requires a central authority to number catalogs and books so that they can be referenced in this absolutely batshit insane way. IMHO the biggest problem with Xanadu isn't the technical underpinnings, or the disregard for decentralization. It's the UX design, or lack thereof. Having 10 different documents open with a bunch of transclusions and links drawn between them is at best extremely distracting and at worst not at all usable. There's a reason why "spiderweb of documents tied with red string" is a visual shorthand for conspiracy theories. And, again, all that requires a central authority to be putting in the work of tying red string in between all the documents, because nobody actually bothers doing that when writing documents unless threatened with academic or legal sanctions.