While what we need is a convergence of computing with the arts and humanities, what we get is more often “psychology, engineering, or pedagogy.”
.. Thus, this bibliography. At least it is a start. My goal has been to put together a complete picture of Ted Nelson’s body of work as expressed in publication, including selections from ephemeral and non-print media.
17.3 Philosophy of Intertwingularity
.. I said in Computer Lib [2, 6] “Everything is deeply intertwingled.” I meant that all subjects and issues are intertwined and intermingled.
But intertwingled subjects are not what computers usually represent. From the beginning, people have set computers up to be hierarchical. Hierarchy is not in the nature of the computer. It is in the nature of the people who set up computers.
If you say, “everything is hierarchical,” as many computer people do, that is not science, it’s a metaphysical position. It can’t be proven true or false, it can only be proven inconvenient.
Hierarchy maps only some of the relationships in the world, and it badly maps the rest. You cannot represent history hierarchically, but as cross-connecting threads of narrative and relationship.
Unfortunately, the computer world has traditionally imposed hierarchy on everything. Most of the computer world is committed to a metaphysic of hierarchy. Files, directories, and now XML are hierarchical.1 This is not just a philosophical position. It’s an IMposition.
Philosophy of Hypertext: Ted Nelson, pg 26
Part 2.
INFINITIES OF CONNECTION:
The 1958 Schematics PaperIn 1958, at the age of twenty, in my third year at Swarthmore College, I wrote an unusual term paper. I worked on it very hard. The paper was late, being handed in well past the deadline. It was brash, playful, hard to understand, sweeping in scope, vastly ambitious, and sloppily expressed. Looked at from today’s perspective, it may have been rather original and perhaps ahead of its time. (To be discussed on page 39 ff.)
The paper, entitled “Schematics, Systematics, Normatics,” is included here as Appendix A, as scanned from the original. (Unfortunately some pages had to be scanned from old-fashioned hectographic masters, and two of the pages are not completely readable at present.)
I believe the paper got a B+.
The paper was a somewhat inspired and sweeping, but not fully baked, attempt to put together a new philosophical system of thought, logic and expression. It was confusingly stated and hastily finished. It should be thought of as a daring leap of thought by a brash third-year college student. It is phrased irritatingly in a semi-private language, with strange and utterly unclear allusions to various fields. I apologize. Much of this was due to impatience coupled with a great sense of inspiration.
Possiplex: Ted Nelson, pg 261
The Sex Workshops weren’t at all what I expected. There was very little sex. It was about the heart.
Turning toward the Light
For years now I have been full of bitterness, rage and grief from the failure of my projects and my life.
I think it was at the Level Two, the second Stan Dale workshop, that I received a great gift of healing and peace. (Anyway, a calming that is the closest I get to peace.) I became much better able to appreciate other people, at least until they express their opinions. I’m working on that.
After the four Stan Dale workshops, I stayed on the program as an Intern, a volunteer helper, for two years (the standard hitch).
It was a turn toward the light from the bitterness of my life. I became good friends with Stan Dale, and later he helped deeply in my life, flying thousands of miles to facilitate in my family matters– and he didn’t charge a cent. A very wonderful man.
DEFINING MOMENTS
XANADU STORY
Dropping the Pilot (1988)
It was in third quarter 1988, I think, that I acted decisively to save the Xanadu project. Or so I thought. I did what any sensible person would do,, and it was totally, disastrously, wrong.
I was told on the phone — I forget by whom — that my good friend Roger Gregory, who was in charge at XOC down south in Palo Alto, was throwing things and acting crazy. I heard that ‘everybody was ready to leave,’ possibly quit within a day or so.
That made it an emergency comparable to a fire.
I called John Walker, informally still head of Autodesk, and told him the situation. We agreed drastic action was called for; we summoned Roger to meet us at John’s house at Muir Beach, and Walker told Roger he was no longer in charge.
Philosophy of Hypertext: Ted Nelson, pg 22
CONVENTIONS OF WRITING
According to the usual conventions of writing, the author chooses a subject, perhaps a central point to make, and organizes the notes to make that point. We have various expectations about this.
But at the deeper level, these conventions of writing make no sense. If all the points are of possible interest to some reader, and the boundaries of a piece of writing are completely arbitrary, why must there be boundaries? Why cannot
the structure of a written piece continue in many directions, following the connections away from the supposed central point or theme?This is the sort of point that was made in the Twentieth Century by such “stream-of-consciousness” authors as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Just as there are no boundaries to experience or to thought, there need not be any boundaries to stories either.
FOOTNOTES
Footnotes are small initiatives to reach out of some arrangement of content, but they are extremely limited, like hands reaching out of jailhouse windows, constrained by a different plan.
CONVENTIONAL ORGANIZING
Conventional documents are often hierarchically organized, based on numerous conventions as to what are acceptable subjects and their boundaries. For example, there are conventional formats for written reports in the army and many other organizations, and this can simplify many writing tasks. But in the general case- say, writing an article for the New Yorker, if you are lucky and talented enough- any sentence could in principle be at the beginning or the end. There