* <<F3P.1384>> XoW index page scraps
I have been an admirer of Ted Nelson ever since I first became
acquainted with his work over fifteen years ago. Fifteen years is
quite a while in computer time.
Imagine 50 years.
More than 50 years ago, Nelson coined the term 'hypertext', with a
grand and elegant and powerful vision in mind of how computers would
enable new kinds of dynamic, interconnected literature.
Thirty years later, Tim Berners-Lee gave us the World-Wide Web, and
ever since then we've all marveled at the new world of dynamic,
interconnected literature that we live and work in, right?
Not really.
-----
Xanadu has always been about literature. Writing, music, film,
visual art, all kinds of literature, no matter how short or long, no
matter how sublime, no matter how vulgar.
Xanadu is a system for authors!
Xanadu is a system for individuals (not corporations)!
-----
The web that we have nowadays is increasingly site-oriented, not
document-oriented. Web sites are no longer simple document
repositories, they are database-driven application programs which
provide heterogeneous user-interfaces for publishing and consuming
parcels of site-locked, pre-packaged media.
-----
I believe that the modern Web is entirely capable of being coaxed
into giving us Xanalogical hypertext. If we see the Web of today in
its most generalized sense, we have three components:
1. A very mature request/response protocol (HTTP) with enormous
flexibility in request syntax,
2. A document interchange format (HTML) which is human-readable and
extensible,
3. And an increasingly powerful, programmable client environment with
full multimedia capabilities.
--
Excerpted from:
PUBLIC NOTES (F)
http://alph.laemeur.com/txt/PUBNOTES-F
©2015 Adam C. Moore (LÆMEUR) <
[email protected]>
