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It's not a book I recommend this article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html about Ted Nelso

It's not a book I recommend this article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html about Ted Nelson and Xanadu. Entertaining reading. The Curse of Xanadu By Gary Wolf It was the most radical computer dream of the hacker era. Ted Nelson's Xanadu project was supposed to be the universal, democratic hypertext library that would help human life evolve into an entirely new form. Instead, it sucked Nelson and his intrepid band of true believers into what became the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing - a 30-year saga of rabid prototyping and heart-slashing despair. The amazing epic tragedy.

leoc 13y ago
Nelson was furious about the article and believed it had misrepresented him and Xanadu, evidently with some reason: http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.ksu.edu/Faculty/McGrathD/Fall99/NelsonLtr.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.k...
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  Thank you, thank you! I had always hoped there would be some kind of follow-up to the Wired article.
  - leoc 13y ago
    And some more detail: http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com.au/ararat http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com....
hga 13y ago
Vaporware might be too strong a description, but an "amazing epic tragedy" that chewed up three decades of very smart people's effort is correct, from what I've heard from a friend who looked at what they produced. Besides taking way way too long, as not uncommon in stealth mode projects they failed make sure their system was end to end usable. My fried said trying to make a browser/viewer/whatever for Xanadu required using an API that was impossibly complicated, and while I don't remember the specifics now, he cited them in detail.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  There used to be some kind of implementation (a mock-up, really) on-line with a text one could zoom out and in and surf from "things" to "things" but I can't find it anymore.

leoc 13y ago

Nelson was furious about the article and believed it had misrepresented him and Xanadu, evidently with some reason: http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.ksu.edu/Faculty/McGrathD/Fall99/NelsonLtr.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.k...

johnchristopher 13y ago
Thank you, thank you! I had always hoped there would be some kind of follow-up to the Wired article.
- leoc 13y ago
  And some more detail: http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com.au/ararat http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com....

hga 13y ago

Vaporware might be too strong a description, but an "amazing epic tragedy" that chewed up three decades of very smart people's effort is correct, from what I've heard from a friend who looked at what they produced. Besides taking way way too long, as not uncommon in stealth mode projects they failed make sure their system was end to end usable. My fried said trying to make a browser/viewer/whatever for Xanadu required using an API that was impossibly complicated, and while I don't remember the specifics now, he cited them in detail.

johnchristopher 13y ago
There used to be some kind of implementation (a mock-up, really) on-line with a text one could zoom out and in and surf from "things" to "things" but I can't find it anymore.