June 2, 2003
Reading Nelson
In the Narrative as Virtual Reality comments thread, I’ve suggested rather strongly that those who plan to discuss hypertext should read the work of Ted Nelson — as both the term “hypertext” and the ideas it describes come from his writings.
Of course, such suggestions often lead to the question, “Where can I read Nelson’s writings?” Unfortunately, they aren’t found in the local chain bookstore, and perhaps not even in the local research library. So I’ve put together a few pointers.
- One of the best places to start, for understanding the meaning of “hypertext” (and the meaning of “hypermedia,” coined at the same time) is Nelson’s 1970 article, “No More Teachers’ Dirty Looks.” This was reprinted, in full, in Nelson’s seminal 1974/5 Computer Lib / Dream Machines. It is among the excerpts from that book reprinted in The New Media Reader — and the CL/DM chapter is one of those available in full from the excerpts page of the NMR website (as a pdf). CL/DM is, unfortunately, out of print (so the only way to read the whole thing is to find it used or in a library).
- In addition to the generic concept of hypertext/media, Nelson also worked to develop a particular hypertext system called Xanadu. This was conceived as a world-wide hypertext publishing network, on the scale of today’s web. Of course, Nelson was laughed at for years for thinking such a thing was possible (and that anyone would want it if it were). Now it seems a little less funny. Nelson also realized many of the implications such a network would have, and tried to think through them. For example, Xanadu included methods for preventing “not found” errors, a plan for a chain of what we would now call “internet cafes,” and an approach to dealing with copyright that was aimed at making creative re-use (remixing) seamless while keeping copyright holders happy. (The last of these will be the historical touchstone for my talk at “Copyright and the Networked Computer” in Washington DC this November.) All these ideas are outlined in his Literary Machines (originally published in 1981, and revised several times). The whole of Literary Machines 93.1 is available to read online, in the JFax format (you’ll probably need to download the reader). There are also excerpts from the 1981 edition of Literary Machines in The New Media Reader, but these are not available online. The whole book, in its 1993 edition, can be purchased from Eastgate Systems.
- Finally, there’s some very interesting “living” material out there. For example, if you want to try out some of the Xanadu source code that was open-sourced a few years ago, there’s a good resource at Sunless Sea. There are also some interesting things to read and links to follow at Xanadu Australia. Finally, I’m rather interested in a data model that Nelson’s been talking about in recent years: ZigZag.
June 5th, 2003 at 1:34 pm
Noah, I just read up on ZigZag, following your link. It’s an impressive and ambitious set of ideas, worth reading up on. It connects with our current discussion of artist programmers in its proclamation, “It is time to return real programming to users and even beginning users, to whom it has been denied since 1984.” (In the spirit of ZigZag, I’ve attempted to create a two-way link between this Nelson comment thread and the artist programmer comment thread.)
Here’s some snippets from an essay on ZigZag programming, from 1999:
“We want to make it easy for users to program, creating their own scripts and loops of function– especially position and animation of contents in space, response to users, numerical functions. … The problem of programming is fundamentally the problem of human visualization and understanding of what we tell want our machines to do, and relating such plans to what we *want* them to do. The popular and conventional programming systems represent particular compromises and styles of trying to manage this complexity. … [B]ecause ordinary programming lacks an intrinsic structure of connection, the structure of connection is managed by a variety of conventions and utilities that have to be too complicated. However, since ZigZag has an intrinsic structure of connection, it should be possible to skip most of that cross-referencing and maintain connections between program parts directly. For instance, there may be relatively little need for variable names or labels.”
December 25th, 2007 at 7:38 am
[…] In Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray I found a reference to this book, which was apparently the first “semipopular” book about computers. Berkeley’s book expresses hopes and concerns from its own historical moment, collects a useful bibliography of important early writing on computers, and issues the first call for popular engagement with and understanding of computers. With its simple but thorough descriptions of how computer systems work, it is an ancestor of The Elements of Computer Systems, but the book is also notable as a predecessor of the populist and manifesto-like Computer Lib / Dream Machines. […]