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> Xanadu wasn’t the victim of “Worse is Better”; it was just a solution in search of a problem. Well, in the day to day use of computers across everyone I inte

by Rygian 1mo ago

> Xanadu wasn’t the victim of “Worse is Better”; it was just a solution in search of a problem. Well, in the day to day use of computers across everyone I interact with, the following problems are very much present and still unsolved (savvy users can address them and transform them into chores; non-savvy users solve some of them by paying money to pospone the issues): - I don't have any space left on my phone but my laptop has tons of space available. (Addressed by Xanadu principle 13.) - How do I back up my stuff uniformly across my devices. (Addressed by Xanadu principle 14.) - How do I share this file with a relative. (Addressed by Xanadu principles 2+4+10+11+12.) - How do I not get trapped by vendors who want to lock me into their cloud solution. (Addressed by Xanadu principles 1, 2, 3, 15, 17.) So the problems are very much there, and not improving. If anything, Xanadu was a prescient solution that addressed back them the problems we have today.

WillAdams 1mo ago
There was a commercial networking product which addressed principle 13 as well --- Kerbango? I remember a couple of ads for it, the idea was that adding a computer to a network and installing this would increase available storage space and back up all the other computers running the software on that network, basically a RAID of compleat machines....
huurtehoog 1mo ago
Intending to solve a concrete problem doesn't automatically mean a product designed under that intent in fact solves a concrete problem. The paragraph above the phrase you quote, addressing the very principles you mention: "Most of those principles make sense only if you don’t ever try it in the real world, where you will discover that many of them are not just of questionable value, or would be fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. (One of the systems that most embodied the principles of robust decentralized storage of files, which moved them closer to users requesting them for efficiency, was… Freenet, which immediately became notorious for child pornography.)" Gwern elaborates at length about the principles, the concrete prototypes and the dissonance. Did you just ctrl+f "solution in search of a problem" to criticize the analysis?
- wwfn 1mo ago
  > fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. As I understand it, this fails to advances the broader "searching for a problem" argument. And is actually addressing a problem others have tried to solve later. re. copyright holders fierce opposition: Youtube might be a good counter to the suggested tragedy of the anticommons. And on the high seas, napster's rise and the continued success of torrents suggest legally is not a barrier to success in and of it's self. The article reasonably ties copyright to free software. opensource has done pretty well. [The article's link back to ycombinator referencing Xanadu's allergic reaction to opening the code is an interesting candidate for why we're not using the OS now. Too locked down to get the love and exposure it needed? Bonus recursive side note: "has never believed in FLOSS" links to hackernews, demonstrating both back and forward linking -- another counterpoint to the presented augments against Xanadu's impracticality ] Its not your (quoted) claim, but it's worth being explicit. Freenet is as legal as facebook or twitter[0]. People do illegal stuff with crypography. But it's ostensibly a way to protect from authoritarian overreach. Which still seems like a problem in search of a solution. [0]: https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-peer https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-... > One example comes from U.S. law, used here for illustration rather than as a universal rule: 17 U.S.C. §512, part of the DMCA. It expressly addresses “transitory digital network communications” (automatic transmission, routing, and intermediate or transient storage) and “system caching” (certain automatic temporary storage of third-party material).
  - huurtehoog 29d ago
    I don't understand what's your point. How does the existence of copyright breach bears on the fact that Xanadu was a fever dream and not a real solution to real problems and hence consigned to the list of fanciful technologies that never gained adoption?
    - wwfn 29d ago
      I read the quoted text as "Xanadu's 'transclusion' can't work in the real world because of copyright and legal issues." But neither of those are issues for popular existing technologies. Rereading your parent comment, I'm guessing my confusion is in connecting that quote to why Xanadu fails to solve "the concrete problem" or endorsing "a solution in search of a problem"/addressing "worse is better." My comment was intended as a +1 to @Rygian: Xanadu was prescient wrt. file management and an opportunity to push back against Freenet=CSAM
iFreilicht 1mo ago
Hmm, I agree that the problems are real and very relevant and anadu intended to offer a solution. But it was simply never finished enough to actually solve them.
- leoc 1mo ago
  Sure, but that's not the "just a solution in search of a problem" claim made in the article. I don't think anyone including Ted Nelson has ever claimed that Xanadu was sufficiently complete at any point.
killerstorm 1mo ago
Xanadu principle have outlined important problems. This does not mean that Xanadu created practical solution, though: it seems they were focused on text transclusions UI for some reason... If the goal of Xanadu was to offer a better, more principled form of information sharing, they should have focused 99% of effort on the protocols & backend implementation, leaving UI rudimentary. E.g. TUI might be sufficient to browser hypertext, and that would be compatible with ~all systems, unlike their GUI contraptions.

by Rygian 1mo ago

WillAdams 1mo ago

There was a commercial networking product which addressed principle 13 as well --- Kerbango? I remember a couple of ads for it, the idea was that adding a computer to a network and installing this would increase available storage space and back up all the other computers running the software on that network, basically a RAID of compleat machines....

huurtehoog 1mo ago

Intending to solve a concrete problem doesn't automatically mean a product designed under that intent in fact solves a concrete problem. The paragraph above the phrase you quote, addressing the very principles you mention: "Most of those principles make sense only if you don’t ever try it in the real world, where you will discover that many of them are not just of questionable value, or would be fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. (One of the systems that most embodied the principles of robust decentralized storage of files, which moved them closer to users requesting them for efficiency, was… Freenet, which immediately became notorious for child pornography.)" Gwern elaborates at length about the principles, the concrete prototypes and the dissonance. Did you just ctrl+f "solution in search of a problem" to criticize the analysis?

wwfn 1mo ago
> fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. As I understand it, this fails to advances the broader "searching for a problem" argument. And is actually addressing a problem others have tried to solve later. re. copyright holders fierce opposition: Youtube might be a good counter to the suggested tragedy of the anticommons. And on the high seas, napster's rise and the continued success of torrents suggest legally is not a barrier to success in and of it's self. The article reasonably ties copyright to free software. opensource has done pretty well. [The article's link back to ycombinator referencing Xanadu's allergic reaction to opening the code is an interesting candidate for why we're not using the OS now. Too locked down to get the love and exposure it needed? Bonus recursive side note: "has never believed in FLOSS" links to hackernews, demonstrating both back and forward linking -- another counterpoint to the presented augments against Xanadu's impracticality ] Its not your (quoted) claim, but it's worth being explicit. Freenet is as legal as facebook or twitter[0]. People do illegal stuff with crypography. But it's ostensibly a way to protect from authoritarian overreach. Which still seems like a problem in search of a solution. [0]: https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-peer https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-... > One example comes from U.S. law, used here for illustration rather than as a universal rule: 17 U.S.C. §512, part of the DMCA. It expressly addresses “transitory digital network communications” (automatic transmission, routing, and intermediate or transient storage) and “system caching” (certain automatic temporary storage of third-party material).
- huurtehoog 29d ago
  I don't understand what's your point. How does the existence of copyright breach bears on the fact that Xanadu was a fever dream and not a real solution to real problems and hence consigned to the list of fanciful technologies that never gained adoption?
  - wwfn 29d ago
    I read the quoted text as "Xanadu's 'transclusion' can't work in the real world because of copyright and legal issues." But neither of those are issues for popular existing technologies. Rereading your parent comment, I'm guessing my confusion is in connecting that quote to why Xanadu fails to solve "the concrete problem" or endorsing "a solution in search of a problem"/addressing "worse is better." My comment was intended as a +1 to @Rygian: Xanadu was prescient wrt. file management and an opportunity to push back against Freenet=CSAM

iFreilicht 1mo ago

Hmm, I agree that the problems are real and very relevant and anadu intended to offer a solution. But it was simply never finished enough to actually solve them.

leoc 1mo ago
Sure, but that's not the "just a solution in search of a problem" claim made in the article. I don't think anyone including Ted Nelson has ever claimed that Xanadu was sufficiently complete at any point.

killerstorm 1mo ago

Xanadu principle have outlined important problems. This does not mean that Xanadu created practical solution, though: it seems they were focused on text transclusions UI for some reason... If the goal of Xanadu was to offer a better, more principled form of information sharing, they should have focused 99% of effort on the protocols & backend implementation, leaving UI rudimentary. E.g. TUI might be sufficient to browser hypertext, and that would be compatible with ~all systems, unlike their GUI contraptions.