Possiplex: Ted Nelson ’59 and the Literary Machine
IN A WHARTON LOUNGE A LITTLE MORE THAN 50 YEARS AGO, a Swarthmore student named Ted Nelson tried to compose a difficult seminar paper. He was overflowing with ideas and awash in distractions, and e was intensely frustrated that these ideas could not be easily organized on paper. He wondered if the recently invented computer might play a role in solving the problem and sketched out some ideas for how a literary machine might facilitate better term papers, better libraries, and indeed a better repository for the world’s documents. The pursuit of that idea changed the world.
.. Possiplex makes it clear that Swarthmore exerted and continues to exert a strong influence on Nelson. This starts with the College’s foundational belief in the equal dignity of art, science, and engineering: All of Nelson’s work emphasizes their unity. The omnivorous intellectual interests (and lengthy reading lists) long characteristic of Swarthmore students are reflected in Nelson’s insistence that reading is nonsequential, that each reader must be free to follow fresh paths as spirit and understanding dictate.
.. Possiplex records two recurring struggles: Nelson’s struggle to be understood, and his fight to retain “creative control.” Time and again, Nelson is frustrated by investors, managers, and colleagues who do not understand or cannot quite believe his vision, and by developers who stray from his designs.
.. one defining experience was a rare visit, at age 13, to see his father direct the live television broadcast of a soap opera. Shortly after the show began, one of the cameras failed, and all the carefully rehearsed camera moves were suddenly useless.
“Ralph, with military composure and the ever-present cigarette, started talking on the intercom, with one eye on his script and one eye on the monitors that fed from cameras two and three. ‘Camera three to the kitchen, focus on Mama… Hold it there, camera three. Switch to camera three. Camera two to the kitchen, focus on Nels. Switch to camera two.’”
This dream of art and command stayed with Nelson and has shaped his vision of how software ought to be created. “Most software,” Nelson writes, “has no director—nobody with the authority to decide and change every part—and that’s why it’s all so lousy.”