04/24/2014 INTERTWINGLED: Ted Nelson, “What Box?”

I feel much better understood than I knew.

Eric and mother Deborah Stone.

School was a prison and imposition.  Religion is human creativity.

I became a project tornado (4 min)

All projects are alike, revising as you go.

The Rock Musical has been released as a CD.

2 Luminous Miscalculations

  1. Thought I would get a Hollywood contract
  2. Thought I would stay in Grad School, not appreciating the brutal character of Grad School

Not in early histories because my vision didn’t fit with ..

Had a vision by end of Grad School

Had thousands of cards, some of which are scanned by Stanford (14 min)

3. Redefine literature with hypertext: visible parallel connections (1961)

4. General Creative started

5. Search for leverage:

6.

7. By 30 will be rich enough to have hypertext transferred – all digital life

8. Moviemaking

9. Start what is pixar

Creative control is important, so must have low budget, getting traction without backers

Wanted to show the length of the document in the title (19 min)

If only I said “Parallel pages visibly connected”

I thought people got it and nobody did

Build a document out of pointers to an ever growing document

Bill Duval saw that it was more efficient (23 min)

Apple and Microsoft did not understand the PUI and cut corners.

I am a minimalist

I have 4 designs:

xanadu – correct and true design of literature

zigzag – hyperthoginal display of data

xanadu space is based on zigzag

zogol: allows a graphics engine, pivoting in multiple dimensions

merge concepts into one

UTMOS: ubstreerous ted’s multifarious operating system

What about intertwingularity – Hereclytus: (40 min)

I was dealt one of the best hands in history. (41 min)

I believe it would have been different if I had gotten backing.

That I did not learn computer programming is my great shame.

System humanist

Intertwingled: Afternoon Session #2 04/24/2014

You could transclude a part of an image

Transclusion accelerates authoring.  We need better authoring tools.

Doug: Collective IQ: because we need a way to operate in an increasingly complex world

.. “What We Might Yet Be: The Importance of Ted’s Vision”
– Belinda Barnet (media historian)

Hypertext was a workstation-bases version hypertext.  No one was interested in building a world-wide hypertext system.

It was only with the web that people saw that the real interesting things happen when the links cross organizational boundaries and continents (47 min)

Steve Wozniak (53 min)

The inventors of the transistor (William Shockley) are not that well known except in the right community.  He did his work long before its effect became public

We get to habits and we don’t want to give them up when they become bad.

I first met Ted at Oxford.. he had a very important part of my life and my background in the Homebrew Computer Club

They had a humanistic viewpoint.  The bible was Computer Lib.  The Standford Sociology professors were influence by Ted.

The social revolution was more important to me. (59 min)

We will be masters of our own destiny.  We won’t have it forced upon us (1 hr 01 min)

I look at Ted’s ideas ..  where did they come from  (reminds him of how he came up with the idea of adding color monitor)

Hypercard was the finest program.

Ted has a very important part in my upbringing with the Home Brew computer club

Ted talked about all the human aspect.  Computer lib was my bible. (57 min)

Human vs Technology: Jeff Raskin was important in advocating that systems be made simple

A computer can solve a problem after a human tells it the method

Young people look at Ted as like Bob Dylan (1 h 12 min)

I have a feeling that this is going to be going on long after Ted is gone (1 hr 13)

He had it so right, right from the beginning.

Intertwingled: Chapman University: Afternoon Session # 1: 4/24/2014

Brewster Kahle: Hanging Out With Ted

Ted was building a system for writers.  I had been building a system for readers. (3 min)

Ted Nelson Month: to do ZigZag

Ken Knowlton:

spent a lot of time on a farm (23 min)

to provide the tools to manage our conectivity (26 min)

No idea is an island (32 min)

The internet is going to make us more dependent on fragile interdependent systems.

Is it going to be competition for what’s left or cooperation (39 min)

God’s book of mathematical books

Andrew Pam

When you’re looking at world simulation games, destruction is the first way to have an effect (1 hr 7 min), hence the shooter games

Dick Heiser

Xanadu needed examples of how a 100-page Request for Proposal could be implemented. (1 hr 26 min -1 hr 28 min

Computer Lib is an advanced book for beginners.

The purpose of computers is human freedom.

Ted was like Jesus driving the money lenders out of the table (righteously offended) (~1 hr 31 min)

Intertwingled: Chapman University: Morning Session # 2: 4/24/2014

Dan Rosenberg: Historian University of Oregon
Within bodies of writing, everywhere, there are linkages we tend not to see.  The individual document, at hand, is what we deal with; we do not see the total linked collection of the all at once. But they are there, the documents not present as well as those that are, and the grand cat’s-cradle among them all.
-Ted Nelson, Literary Machines  (5 min)
The original French 18th century Encyclopedia was conceived of as hypertext (~10-11 min)
In real life, that is to say, on paper (laugh) (13 min)
Literature is debugged: ideas that “work”
The enlightenment thinkers were anti-Aristotelian (scholasticism)
Jaron: a gigantic fall from grace which is the opposite of moore’s law (32 min)
We have to gradually find our way back to Ted (33 min)
If you can remember the provenance for where bits come from, you can use that as the basis for a micropayment system.
Ted’s system of micropayments is the solution to the left-right (Marx – Ayn Rand) dilemma
Jaron to Xerox people: You should reference stuff, rather than copying it  (45 min)
“Don’t worry be crappy.” Silicon valley’s path to riches is spreading fast and getting users (48 min)
Fortunes have been made trying to construct backlinks: Google
  • the effect on society is extreme privatization (incomplete designs lead to to income inequality) (49-51 min)
  • mere openness is not enough, there has to be the ability to use the information
  • successful open source software projects have a middle class (lots of small contributors)
  • context-free openness has led to the decline of the middle class
  • we are concentrating the wealth in the processors rather than the ones doing the work: google has to scrape the web for fresh translations to power there translation software.
  • We have to disenfranchise the creators of content by forgetting provenance
  • There were to kinds of young men (hippie, military redneck) (1 hr 01 min) that wanted to destroy provenance
    • Hippies: want to limit government power through anonymity
    • Redneck: CB radio with anonymous handles, used to avoid police (1 hr 03 min)
  • The provenance has to be a kind that benefits the people who are not private.  Ted’s ideas are the solution to that.
  • Its going to take a while to turn it around (1 hr 6 min)

Noah Wardip Fruin

All simulation is political, a primary form of representation, governed by rules

  • Kodu: shooting is a top level.  Saying is a sub-menu.  Relationships are totally absent. (~1 hr 10 min – 1 hr 20 min)

We want to educate people who will disrupt the tech status quo, rather than fill a pipeline (1 hr 20 min)