[LINK] Ted Nelson on Notes in The Margin

[Tom Worthington]

Dr. Ted Nelson, Founding Designer, Project Xanadu in Sydney this evening 
said "I was here first and its all gone wrong". This was in reference to 
Facebook. He argues that the last 60 years of computing has gone the 
wrong way, with hierarchical systems which imitated paper systems 
online. It will be interesting to see how he supports this. I have just 
come from CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia 2011 where McKenzie Wark demonstrated 
  an interface showing the comments as stacked cards, linked to sections 
in the text.

Dr. Nelson argued that Microsoft Word, PDF and the web do not have the 
ability to allow margin notes because the people who designed them did 
not want them. But as McKenzie points out, there are systems which allow 
these, for those who want this feature.

Dr. Nelson claims that his idea of hypertext cannot work in the world 
wide web. This seems similar to Richard Stallman complaining that others 
have taken his idea of free software and distorted it to produce open 
source. The complaint seems to be not so much the original idea has not 
been implemented, but that the version which has become popular does not 
acknowledge their work. Nelson and Stallman are frustrated that few 
listen and even fewer understand what they say, but they will not 
attempt to explain it in terms of what has happened since. It may be 
they are right and everyone since is wrong, but if they can't explain it 
to anyone now, then their work is of historical interest only.

Dr. Nelson gave a brief history of the graphical user interface from 
Xerox and then adapted by Apple and Microsoft. He argued they implement 
the same paper based interface on a computer. In my view this is well 
accepted in the user interface design community. It is frustrating that 
we are stuck with the desktop metaphor (with some odd adaptations) but 
this is an improvement on what came before.

Dr. Nelson then seemed to get off the topic onto user interface design 
and then how to write a headline. He argued these are not technical 
issues. I don't agree: these are technical issues for different 
disciplines. Donald Norman discussed the issue of design at length in 
The Design of Everyday Things and later works.

Dr. Nelson then showed a black and white video spoof of a very boring 
university lecture. There may have been some point to this, but I don't 
know what it was.

Dr. Nelson then demonstrated "Zig Zag". This appears to be a linked list 
used to create a multidimensional spreadsheet (or database). He claimed 
this was based on a unique mathematical structure. This reminded me of 
Google Wave, which is apparently based on a sophisticated theory and was 
developed at a cost of hundred of millions of dollars. However, after 
several presentations from the Google developers I still could not 
understand it and they could not show me an implementation where I could 
read the text. The project was cancelled (but may reappear as part of 
Android).

See also: "Possiplex : An Autobiography of Ted Nelson".

Dr. Nelson will be speaking in Brisbane, 12 April 2011.

Links in my blog: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/04/ted-nelson-on-notes-in-margin.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra