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early 90s Additonal: March 2000
Attending Ted Nelson's
_World Enough_ talks...
I begin to pick up And I begin to wonder:
something about Is it really a productive
his methods. way to work?
One of the things he really You can drive yourself
wants Xanadu for is to crazy doing this! Far
handle the intercomparision better to try to get
of different versions. He it right the first
wants to be able to look at time, to develop an You can't
things every way, before instinct for picking a write an
deciding which way is best. good way without essay the
trying to exhaustively way a
examine all computer
permutations. plays chess.
META
He also places a lot of But who is ever
emphasis on methods of going to look at
historical backtrack, so those old
that you can look at older versions, except
versions of what you have, for Lit majors,
and so on. historians, and
masochists? I wonder what
Very rarely is Nelson would
this a useful think of a GUI
feature. editor with a
simple,
integrated
interface to a
programmer's
version control
system, like
CVS? (Suggest
Also, evidentally Nelson Drowning for Lyx?)
takes endless amounts of yourself in
notes about things, to notes is a bad (January 27, 2006)
the point where he can't idea. You Now, the wikipedia
keep track of where the should always has some "History"
old notes are, or what try to work on features like this.
they're about. something close
to the finished
product (if at
all possible) FINISHED
rather than
stall by taking
yet another
note.
BOTTOMSUP
He puts a lot of emphasis But, If the idea
on inspiration, getting is really good, won't
that idea down on paper you remember it, or
before it's lost. at least be able to re-
discover it without
much trouble?
Taking an unsympathetic eye,
Ted Nelson looks an awful lot
like a plodder, a slow Though I'm sure you could
thinker with a weak memory. find people who would say
similar things about me.
EXTERNAL
It's actually a real problem
that there's no shortage of
unsympathetic eyes towards Nelson.
Despite the lack of success of his
software project, his books have
been a clear influence on the
current world of webs and browsers...
and the software we've got might
be a lot better if he'd had an
even bigger audience.
Tim Berners-Lee calls him
a "professional visionary".
And there was a Wall
Street Journal
headline: "Japanese
Embrace a Man Too
Eccentric For Silicon
Valley."
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