6 ms·

Oh dear. This is a Jef Raskin-esque rant of an old man that's realised they aren't going to be nearly as influential in the history books as they once thought.

Oh dear. This is a Jef Raskin-esque rant of an old man that's realised they aren't going to be nearly as influential in the history books as they once thought. I would hope never to have to do the same, either from delusions in the present or anger at the end! This business of underplaying or demeaning the importance of the use of icons, fonts, or familiar metaphors in favour of some abstract notion of an interface that no one has succeeded in ever implementing, not least because no one can agree on what it should be, is a running theme. This is often accompanied by banging on about the importance of what are really just clerical operations. PARC, like any office of a large organisation, was invariably subject to revisionist history, office politics and all sorts of other nonsense, but attempting to deny the fact they did produce the direction for our last 30 years (and possibly into the near future) is ludicrous, much as a similar rant against Bell Labs would be misguided. Most specifically he glosses over the fact that the nature of applications in the environments at PARC had far blurrier lines around the edges than say iOS apps do. They had things like OLE, which the web is clearly trending to recreate in the form of web components because though implementations have sucked the idea itself makes sense to people. Paying close attention to the ideas from PARC you can see that the real philosophical difference is Nelson is closer to the idea of an all ruling single document format - whereas the vision PARC believed in was an all ruling single code format. Once more the parallel to the evolution of the web is clear, in that what began as a way to distribute documents is morphing, slowly, into a method for distributing rich code objects.

AlecEifel 13y ago
Agree 100% -- I couldn't have said it better! In my professional life, I have often met consultant types with super vague technical ideas that (surprise!) they were secretly working on implementing. They woudn't release anything because they fear being criticized. The GUI was a big deal and still is to this day. Xerox PARC did change the world. Ted Nelson? Not so much...
- melloclello 13y ago
  It's not about who did and who didn't change the world, but the fact that the people who did change the world are not above (some pretty ruthless) criticism.
- DougMerritt 13y ago
  Ted Nelson did change the world, actually, but by his evangelism, not by implementing. There's a reason that he is famous, and it's not because his Xanadu project failed in many senses.
joe_the_user 13y ago
I think you're missing that this is a thought-experiment around what could be. And you are just wrong in any implication that Nelson is denying that Xerox Park "won". Even when one approach wins, it is foolish to avoid looking at what other approaches offer. And that is all he is doing (from his particular, biased-but-interesting viewpoint, of course). I do think Nelson underestimates the importance of icon and metaphor but given that he specific paradigm in mind, I think that's an honest mistake, not a mean-spirit effort to denigrate someone (in contrast to, say, your post for example).
- fidotron 13y ago
  I don't mean to denigrate with my opening comments, so much as observe this particular rant is not exactly dignified. There is a graceful way to present this point of view, and this isn't it. I agree that he's clear that the PARC view won, but he (and this is the critical Raskin similiarity) is deluded about why they won, and that is because the PARC type ideas are what people want. Additionally I would argue his view is "merely" an application layer you could build with the PARC derived structure, while the opposite is not the case, assuming it could be implemented at all. The main lesson I get from this kind of thing is a life spent pontificating without delivering products, even in the form of research products, is basically a waste. Even if those products are in some sense misguided it's better to have something concrete to argue about that can be built upon, stolen from, or discarded than a lot of ideas which never get done. I guess with that I go back to my other windows and get back to work as it's a trap that is very tempting for me to fall into.
GuiA 13y ago
His Youtube lectures are a poor starting point to get acquainted with his work. Start with Computer Lib to get the historical context. Then Dream Machines to get his original ideas and visions for computers as tools. Then Literary Machines, Geeks Bearing Gifts, and Possiplex (all worth it if you appreciate his work; if you don't then their level of interest decreases as publication dates increase). And finally if you really like the guy, then you can watch his Youtube lectures. It's easy to dismiss Ted Nelson as some old crazy man who spent his life selling snake oil when you're behind your computer, but the reality of it is that he contributed a lot to the field and is deeply respected amongst his peers. He was a close friend of Engelbart, his work valued by his contemporaries, and there's a reason for which he was invited at the Homebrew Computer Club reunion a few months ago. Nelson's work gives us an insight on what computing could have looked like, in some weird parallel world. He is controversial, perhaps; and some of his ideas/claims may be unpractical/unrealistic/etc. - but ignoring and dismissing him only sends the message that you're not as much of an expert as your rhetoric attempts to make you out to be.
- rektide 13y ago
  Alas, this believer in transclusion also deeply feels it's important that authors need to be paid, himself included. Perhaps he'd have a better chance to impact history in a meaningful way if he opted to give away for free the works making that case? Very few will have a chance to be exposed to the ideas Ted Nelson promotes: the range of books you suggest shows the impossibility of ever getting a comprehensive look into his view.
  - jejones3141 13y ago
    More to the point, if he'd opted to open source the code. In Computer Lib/Dream Machines, one of the systems Nelson describes and lauds is Calvin Mooers's TRAC macro language. Mooers took his IP seriously and defended it seriously. You can read his argument in favor of copyright to protect software in a Computing Surveys issue from some decades ago. Mooers protected TRAC right into oblivion--if even 1% of those who read HN have ever heard of it, I'll be amazed. David Turner, who has done very important work on implementing applicative languages, similarly protected Miranda, with the result that the major work is being done elsewhere, on Haskell et al. Project Xanadu is "worse is better" taken to the limit, in which the better doesn't even exist save perhaps as a prototype that you can at best see a short video of. The story of Project Xanadu is a tragedy of seeking funding and resources, exhausting them, and then having to look for more. How much better off would the world--including Nelson himself!--be had he decided to open it up to the bazaar.
bloaf 13y ago
He strikes me as an old testament prophet telling us "repent in sackcloth and ashes!" He thinks we've been wandering in a desert for 30-some years, and he is here to point out that PARC was holding the map when we got lost. The thing is that he is not wrong. Computer documents are, for the most part, paper-simulators and that paradigm wastes a computer's potential. You're right that there is disagreement about what we can do to improve things, but he is saying that perhaps if the alternatives weren't fighting the conceptual fast-food that is WYSIWYG, we might have figured it out at some point over the past 30 years.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
Can anyone explain what the parent means by "Jef Raskin-esque rant" ?
- sanoli 13y ago
  Raskin had a different vision of what the Mac interface should have been. Jobs' vision won. Raskin still ranted about it long time after.
- mmcconnell1618 13y ago
  Jef Raskin was a computer/ui designer who worked on the Canon Cat before becoming the leader on the Macintosh program at Apple. Steve Jobs took over the program and Jef was, by some accounts, forced out of the project. He expressed strongly opinionated ideas about what computer interfaces should be in a way that many see as rants about what might have been. His book, The Humane Inerface (http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376 http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera...) does have some interesting thoughts on how novice and expert users have completely different ways of interacting with machines.
  - pdw 13y ago
    Wasn't it the other way around? Raskin started the Macintosh project, and then did the Canon Cat after Jobs forced him out.
  - tygorius 13y ago
    As has been pointed out, you've got the sequence reversed. Raskin was on the original Macintosh team first. His ideas for the project included keeping the cost down. Things like using an 8-bit CPU (the 6809?) rather than the still-pricey 68000, a character-based display rather than bit-mapped, etc. He later created his own company and used those ideas in what became the Canon Cat product -- something that looked like a shrunken ADM-3A terminal. It kept all your documents on a floppy disk eschewing normal filesystem in favor of a Forth-based image system (not too unlike Smalltalk images). Unfortunately he was convinced his ideas for interfaces should be protected by patents, virtually guaranteeing that things like his "leap" keys would never be adopted. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was a tremendous sense of possibility for what computers could do for us on the personal level. I think Nelson, like Alan Kay, is worth revisiting on that basis: reminding us of possibilities, not so much who was right and wrong or who was first to think of X.
Tloewald 13y ago
OpenDoc represented a gigantic attempt to create a document-centric apps-are-just-services framework that consumed hundreds of person-years of the "best and brightest" and produced nothing much useful. And then there was Taligent. Ted Nelson's vision is attractive and brilliant and fundamentally misguided. I remember reading one of his pieces on hypertext and how there was this idea of everything being, in essence, part of a disambiguated database of information so that any version of, say, Macbeth, would be linked to the canonical Macbeth... And I thought -- hang on, does he not realize that when it comes to almost any creative work there is no canonical version ever? (Actually at the time I thought Shakespeare's works -- where we don't have any of his original manuscripts in most cases and rely on warring fragments of revisions -- was unusual, but in fact almost anything has these issues of provenance, even in the wholly digital world.)
smrtinsert 13y ago
There is some merit to what he's talking about. The idea of segmenting pieces of the file metaphor for linking or applying permissions has merit imo. http://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/PARALUNE/paraviz.html http://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/PARALUNE/paraviz.html I would love to be able to link from one data element to another. I believe it would eliminate a whole class of applications. One of the reasons I think the Android ecosystem will win out in the end is due to Intents, I don't see any other operating system even attempting something that cool.

AlecEifel 13y ago

Agree 100% -- I couldn't have said it better! In my professional life, I have often met consultant types with super vague technical ideas that (surprise!) they were secretly working on implementing. They woudn't release anything because they fear being criticized. The GUI was a big deal and still is to this day. Xerox PARC did change the world. Ted Nelson? Not so much...

melloclello 13y ago
It's not about who did and who didn't change the world, but the fact that the people who did change the world are not above (some pretty ruthless) criticism.
DougMerritt 13y ago
Ted Nelson did change the world, actually, but by his evangelism, not by implementing. There's a reason that he is famous, and it's not because his Xanadu project failed in many senses.

joe_the_user 13y ago

I think you're missing that this is a thought-experiment around what could be. And you are just wrong in any implication that Nelson is denying that Xerox Park "won". Even when one approach wins, it is foolish to avoid looking at what other approaches offer. And that is all he is doing (from his particular, biased-but-interesting viewpoint, of course). I do think Nelson underestimates the importance of icon and metaphor but given that he specific paradigm in mind, I think that's an honest mistake, not a mean-spirit effort to denigrate someone (in contrast to, say, your post for example).

fidotron 13y ago
I don't mean to denigrate with my opening comments, so much as observe this particular rant is not exactly dignified. There is a graceful way to present this point of view, and this isn't it. I agree that he's clear that the PARC view won, but he (and this is the critical Raskin similiarity) is deluded about why they won, and that is because the PARC type ideas are what people want. Additionally I would argue his view is "merely" an application layer you could build with the PARC derived structure, while the opposite is not the case, assuming it could be implemented at all. The main lesson I get from this kind of thing is a life spent pontificating without delivering products, even in the form of research products, is basically a waste. Even if those products are in some sense misguided it's better to have something concrete to argue about that can be built upon, stolen from, or discarded than a lot of ideas which never get done. I guess with that I go back to my other windows and get back to work as it's a trap that is very tempting for me to fall into.

GuiA 13y ago

His Youtube lectures are a poor starting point to get acquainted with his work. Start with Computer Lib to get the historical context. Then Dream Machines to get his original ideas and visions for computers as tools. Then Literary Machines, Geeks Bearing Gifts, and Possiplex (all worth it if you appreciate his work; if you don't then their level of interest decreases as publication dates increase). And finally if you really like the guy, then you can watch his Youtube lectures. It's easy to dismiss Ted Nelson as some old crazy man who spent his life selling snake oil when you're behind your computer, but the reality of it is that he contributed a lot to the field and is deeply respected amongst his peers. He was a close friend of Engelbart, his work valued by his contemporaries, and there's a reason for which he was invited at the Homebrew Computer Club reunion a few months ago. Nelson's work gives us an insight on what computing could have looked like, in some weird parallel world. He is controversial, perhaps; and some of his ideas/claims may be unpractical/unrealistic/etc. - but ignoring and dismissing him only sends the message that you're not as much of an expert as your rhetoric attempts to make you out to be.

rektide 13y ago
Alas, this believer in transclusion also deeply feels it's important that authors need to be paid, himself included. Perhaps he'd have a better chance to impact history in a meaningful way if he opted to give away for free the works making that case? Very few will have a chance to be exposed to the ideas Ted Nelson promotes: the range of books you suggest shows the impossibility of ever getting a comprehensive look into his view.
- jejones3141 13y ago
  More to the point, if he'd opted to open source the code. In Computer Lib/Dream Machines, one of the systems Nelson describes and lauds is Calvin Mooers's TRAC macro language. Mooers took his IP seriously and defended it seriously. You can read his argument in favor of copyright to protect software in a Computing Surveys issue from some decades ago. Mooers protected TRAC right into oblivion--if even 1% of those who read HN have ever heard of it, I'll be amazed. David Turner, who has done very important work on implementing applicative languages, similarly protected Miranda, with the result that the major work is being done elsewhere, on Haskell et al. Project Xanadu is "worse is better" taken to the limit, in which the better doesn't even exist save perhaps as a prototype that you can at best see a short video of. The story of Project Xanadu is a tragedy of seeking funding and resources, exhausting them, and then having to look for more. How much better off would the world--including Nelson himself!--be had he decided to open it up to the bazaar.

bloaf 13y ago

He strikes me as an old testament prophet telling us "repent in sackcloth and ashes!" He thinks we've been wandering in a desert for 30-some years, and he is here to point out that PARC was holding the map when we got lost. The thing is that he is not wrong. Computer documents are, for the most part, paper-simulators and that paradigm wastes a computer's potential. You're right that there is disagreement about what we can do to improve things, but he is saying that perhaps if the alternatives weren't fighting the conceptual fast-food that is WYSIWYG, we might have figured it out at some point over the past 30 years.

nakedrobot2 13y ago

Can anyone explain what the parent means by "Jef Raskin-esque rant" ?

sanoli 13y ago
Raskin had a different vision of what the Mac interface should have been. Jobs' vision won. Raskin still ranted about it long time after.
mmcconnell1618 13y ago
Jef Raskin was a computer/ui designer who worked on the Canon Cat before becoming the leader on the Macintosh program at Apple. Steve Jobs took over the program and Jef was, by some accounts, forced out of the project. He expressed strongly opinionated ideas about what computer interfaces should be in a way that many see as rants about what might have been. His book, The Humane Inerface (http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376 http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera...) does have some interesting thoughts on how novice and expert users have completely different ways of interacting with machines.
- pdw 13y ago
  Wasn't it the other way around? Raskin started the Macintosh project, and then did the Canon Cat after Jobs forced him out.
- tygorius 13y ago
  As has been pointed out, you've got the sequence reversed. Raskin was on the original Macintosh team first. His ideas for the project included keeping the cost down. Things like using an 8-bit CPU (the 6809?) rather than the still-pricey 68000, a character-based display rather than bit-mapped, etc. He later created his own company and used those ideas in what became the Canon Cat product -- something that looked like a shrunken ADM-3A terminal. It kept all your documents on a floppy disk eschewing normal filesystem in favor of a Forth-based image system (not too unlike Smalltalk images). Unfortunately he was convinced his ideas for interfaces should be protected by patents, virtually guaranteeing that things like his "leap" keys would never be adopted. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was a tremendous sense of possibility for what computers could do for us on the personal level. I think Nelson, like Alan Kay, is worth revisiting on that basis: reminding us of possibilities, not so much who was right and wrong or who was first to think of X.

Tloewald 13y ago

OpenDoc represented a gigantic attempt to create a document-centric apps-are-just-services framework that consumed hundreds of person-years of the "best and brightest" and produced nothing much useful. And then there was Taligent. Ted Nelson's vision is attractive and brilliant and fundamentally misguided. I remember reading one of his pieces on hypertext and how there was this idea of everything being, in essence, part of a disambiguated database of information so that any version of, say, Macbeth, would be linked to the canonical Macbeth... And I thought -- hang on, does he not realize that when it comes to almost any creative work there is no canonical version ever? (Actually at the time I thought Shakespeare's works -- where we don't have any of his original manuscripts in most cases and rely on warring fragments of revisions -- was unusual, but in fact almost anything has these issues of provenance, even in the wholly digital world.)

smrtinsert 13y ago

There is some merit to what he's talking about. The idea of segmenting pieces of the file metaphor for linking or applying permissions has merit imo. http://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/PARALUNE/paraviz.html http://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/PARALUNE/paraviz.html I would love to be able to link from one data element to another. I believe it would eliminate a whole class of applications. One of the reasons I think the Android ecosystem will win out in the end is due to Intents, I don't see any other operating system even attempting something that cool.