TidBITS#30/Xanadu
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Topics:
One-line blurb
The Abstract
What is Xanadu?
The New Literature
Xanadu Publishing
Setting Up a Stand
PAX Front End Demo
Further Reading
One-line blurb
--------------
by Ian Feldman (71%)
First Xanadu stand opens Jan. 1993, El Camino Rd, Palo Alto CA. Be
there.
The Abstract
------------
Ted Nelson's worldwide open-hypertext-publishing network, Xanadu,
has once again been delayed. The version described in Literary
Machines 87.1, etc., has been completed, but put on the shelf due
to the absence of some key software mechanisms. The new prototype
of the single-user back-end server software is in Smalltalk that
will compile down to C to run on essentially all types of
machines. That's the nitty-gritty of the keynote lecture at the
first stop of Ted Nelson's 1990 World Tour (complete with
beautifully embroidered black satin jackets), the 'Multimedia 90'
conference, held in Linkoping, Sweden on September 10th.
Ted Nelson: "In 1987 [...] that small fraction of the computer
field that knew of Xanadu was very much astonished when they heard
that the AutoDesk Company [57% world market share in CAD programs]
had actually bought the project, and they'd be even more
astonished if they knew how many millions of dollars AutoDesk has
put into it since, which I can't tell you but it is 'several.'"
They now work on performance and related parameters, so that
online deliveries might take place "while the user is still
awake." The FEBE (front-end-to-back-end terminal access) protocol
has yet to be finalized though. We're to expect a LAN-version of
the xanalogical storage server to be introduced on the market in
1991, with a few front-end programs available from AutoDesk, Inc.
(the Macintosh version is being written by Mark $ Miller, so we're
apparently in good hands).
The first public-access Xanadu vending point in Palo Alto in '93
will be followed six months later by a sister installation at
Chico State University, then in some yet undecided "Country Two,"
in few more American states, then worldwide.
What is Xanadu?
---------------
Ultimately it may take an astrologer or a sun-spot specialist to
find a plausible explanation for the remarkable two weeks in the
fall of 1960 when Ted Nelson figured it all out. Because that's
when he first defined what may eventually be recognized as the
true beginnings of the coming new paradigm, The Age of the Unified
Data Structure.
The Unified Data Structure is an entirely new world-class paradigm
all of Nelson's own doing, even though his life achievements up to
now have mainly consisted of making visionary waves, giving new
meaning to the term 'vaporware' and siring probably the most
stolen book in history ['Computer Lib']. He's also know for
generally muddying the clear minds of inexperienced programming
youth. Some may recall a similar accusation that once did in
Socrates, bringing him the death sentence in due democratic
process by his peers. Or were they really his peers?
Had you been reading this in Xanadu chances are that you'd never
finish the rest of the sentence, instead zooming off to dictionary
entries on Socrates, source writings on Athens democracy, and
collections of commentaries by later contributors. All that and
more, the entire written, whispered, telegraphed, and filmed
record of the civilization as we know it, instantly available at
the fingertips from your own Xanadu home terminal or from a nearby
Public Access Xanadu vending store at Desolution Hwy and Fifth.
Because that is exactly what Nelson's paradigm promises: the
tablets of Babylon, the scrolls of Alexandria, the NFL polls of
all seasons, down to the preserved napkin-doodles of Einstein,
Curie, and Springsteen, all in one LOGICAL, easily accessible
place at the end of an existing-bandwidth telephone wire.
That's Xanadu in a nutshell, and it finally appears to be on the
verge of fulfillment after 30 years spent in the realm of gee-whiz
ideas. Moreover, what it will eventually confront us with will be
an entire new type of literature, a "transclusive fragment writing
and publishing system," first defined in those fateful weeks in
1960.
The New Literature
------------------
And what are those mysterious 'transclusive fragments?' Ted Nelson
has a definition ready for the term he coined two years ago;
finally giving The Vision the right generic name. Transclusion is
a way to include, to quote, parts of a document without losing its
current (or any subsequent) contexts, and without it becoming a
physical part of the new text (which could be a movie,
hyperfiction document, you name it). In this fashion one might see
all newly formulated or recorded texts, data, sounds, pictures as
future 'boilerplate paragraphs' or fragments, available for
viewing, digesting, and transclusion in new works.
And then these fragments will be available cheaply, instantly, and
in principle to all, because there will be no one deciding who
might or might not be a worthy commentator. In present-day times
the possibility of quoting, adding to, or paraphrasing someone
else's work is always a function of access, time, and effort spent
searching for the relevant parts, a process that by its very
definition limits the possible number of contributions and
contributors. It doesn't have to be that way.
Consider literature. "There is this incredibly powerful instrument
called 'literature' that was invented long ago, which we don't
see, don't recognize how powerful the design [of] it really is,
don't think of it as a system, because it is THAT good, we just
say 'oh, that's just the way it is.'"
But what is this 'literature?' "It is a system of interconnected
ideas," the accumulated record of humanity, pile upon pile of
writings, from the earliest of times. A record that each
subsequent generation builds upon, indexes, nails on the doors of
cathedrals, abstracts, rearranges, burns at the stake, folds,
spindles, and mutilates. Of this literature we're usually only
aware of that thin slice that we're physically able to interact
with, pore over despite overdue notes, make comments in the
margins of, wrap a fish in, feel offended on the subway by, clip,
file and forget. Nominally it also chiefly means handling
documents made out of paper.
Now, when Ted Nelson says 'literature' he "doesn't mean paper,
paper documents, and he doesn't mean TEXT either." All of today's
"halfway" (information-handling) systems work on the assumption
that paper is the basis and the desired end result. Nelson thinks
of paper as "just an object that [some] information has been
sprayed onto in the past [...] In today's offices you'll get a
printout at the end and then some secretary will go over and put
some little white paint on something that's wrong and correct it
because getting that paper right is regarded as the objective. And
that means that the computer files are never correct, they are
always an approximation." Alas, "as long as the paper-sprayed
version of a document is seen as the final destination no one
really cares about keeping the computer versions of the same
information canonical or correct."
Xanadu Publishing
-----------------
Then there is the problem of the many modalities available for
presentation. Many are available, but none are on speaking terms
with each other. Text documents are those made up of words on
paper. Motion-picture documents, which we call 'movies,' consist
of picture sequences that have been recorded on film. Sound
documents, which could be words and melody, mumbled by a voice to
music on an LP, all are different modes of conveying the
information that they contain. Still, all these belong to the same
"word-picture-continuum" and to Nelson are of one realm. Therefore
we need to have facilities to be able to treat them as such. "That
means a paradigm shift which in turn means our being able to deal
with change in a new way."
As far as paradigms are concerned, Tomas Kuhn's work, 'The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' has always fascinated and
influenced Nelson. Kuhn tells of "the real arguments between
scientific opponents being all about paradigm boundaries. If one
sees an existing paradigm as a coordinate space, a finite area,
then a radical new idea may be perceived as a paradigm threat, and
the distance between the old and the new one termed 'the paradigm
gap'."
Consider WYSIWYG [What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get], "the most inane
propaganda, the foolish, defensive response to tie a computer
down, the 'paper simulator' used to enshrine two-dimensionality of
paper on a computer screen" [right on, man!]. By recognizing the
limitations of the existing paper-as-record paradigm we prepare
ourselves for the coming new literature, one that's accessible in
a uniform and painless way, one that allows us to contribute to it
on equal terms, rather than those defined by the technological
constraints of production and distribution.
In open-hypertext publishing "anyone will be able to add [publish]
a document which links to or quotes from any other [existing]
document. Freely. Anybody, or else we'd have to decide at the
system level who would be a worthy contributor and who would not,
and neither you nor I are fit to decide who that might be. The
only alternative is to say that everyone is a worthy contributor,
everyone's contributions are in principle welcomed."
And those contributions may then be in the form of the
contributor's own choosing an essay by someone enhanced with voice
comments (How? That's a front-end input problem.), a video
sequence accompanied by blow-ups with notes, a diagram attached to
a screenful of data, pointing out your own (r)evolutionary
insights, all instantly available on the network from the moment
they are published.
These contributions will be available as an ordinary byte-stream,
easy to distribute at the speed of the delivery network of the
day, which is bound to get faster and faster as technology
progresses. Available in a network that might eventually contain
most of our ever-recorded intellectual heritage, that might grow
to allow unlimited number of simultaneous users, consist of
unlimited number of servers, documents, links, transclusions and
fragments requested. And all of these fitting within the
logarithmic-shape 'soft corridor' [LM 87.1 4/2] of the performance
degradation curve, so that delivery times will NOT increase
proportionally with the size of the 'docuverse.'
Indeed, if delays doubled in step with the doubling of the
available document mass, "maneuvering through this vast and
forever growing forest of vines" would become unthinkable. "The
way that this curve deteriorates is a fundamental point which had
to be addressed in the initial design of the data structure and
the algorithms." Thus Xanadu has been "designed backwards from the
performance requirements of [such a future] network scale-up"
[with allowances for additional delays from servers in space,
where "speed-of-light considerations become significant" - LM 87.1
2/57].
Closer to Earth, any published (or MADE PUBLIC) document will be
accessible almost instantly from any Xanadu public access
location, or from any connected terminal of a suitable type.
Obviously, some general-purpose, relatively unsophisticated home
computers might be able to run a front-end to Xanadu, but be
unable to handle all types of documents (such as animated video).
Still, one would most certainly have an option to display named
stills from linked video sequences along with the streaming-text
data on the same monitor.
Or, rather, on a high-resolution TV screens. Upon taking a college
course in 'Computers for the Social Studies' during those weeks in
1960 Nelson discovered that "they've got it all wrong, these were
not some 'computer terminals,' these were great MOVIE PROJECTORS,
behind whose screens one could create chambers where all the
thoughts could be found."
Indeed, the world of movies has a lot in common with that of
software design - the latter in itself a highly structured form of
creative writing. To be exact, Ted Nelson considers software
design to be a branch of cinema. "The cinema-analogy is not an
analogy, it is a statement of fact. Software design ought to be
taught in film schools. Do you know who'd have made the greatest
software designer of the century? Orson Welles, no doubt about it,
if he'd understood what it was about. Because writing software
requires cinematic imagination with the grasp of the possibilities
of writing, a grasp of the possibilities of diagrams, a grasp of
the possibilities of animation, a grasp of the possibilities of
interaction. And Welles was a superb writer..."
Setting Up a Stand
------------------
Back to our open hypertext publishing. "The notion of a [clearly
delimited] document is an important one, really a social and
psychological mechanism, fine, we keep that because literature is
a system of documents which works. Xanadu will provide the feeder,
storage and delivery mechanism that will enrich and electronify
this system, with linkage and transclusions providing a
representation for the previous implicit [idea-inter-]
connections. Before we could say 'such and such author has said so
and so and now I would like to show why and where she is wrong,'
but now in Xanadu you can simply add 'such and such author has
said it' and bingo!, you can go there and see it right away."
Indeed, he thinks of Xanadu as of "that magic place of literary
memory where nothing is [ever] lost."
Among the most important aspects of the system is the automatic
royalty due on every fragment delivered. "Every document will
contain a built-in 'cash register' [...] but the system only works
if the price is low. If the price is high then different users
will [use and] hand each other dated [paper] copies. If the price
is low it'll be more convenient for each user to get [same]
material anew from the system." Indeed, the cost of fetching and
reading a document from the system should be minute in comparison
with other methods. And the royalties for accessing that document
will be advanced to all the authors of there transcluded
fragments, if applicable, in proportion to the byte-content of
their respective contribution.
In fact, the very act of 'publishing a document' will mean signing
a [written] contract with a Xanadu storage vendor, in which the
author (i.e., the publisher) explicitly gives permission for
anyone to link to, to transclude his or her material freely.
Nelson explains that "you have no control over that. However, you
have absolute control over the integrity of your document and you
can give instructions to the reader as to how they should view it
and so on. Of course, since it is sent down the line to the viewer
we have no idea whether they're gonna do that... but that's OK,
the whole point is they're buying the rights [to view it] every
time."
When an author publishes a Xanadu document, he or she pays a small
fee to a Xanadu storage vendor for three years' minimum storage on
the disks (on three different servers, for backup and mean
distance content distribution reasons). The author decides what
gets published, when and where. The author also bears the sole
legal responsibility for that publication's content. If the
document includes something that "wrongs other people or wrongs
the government, breaks the law, [then it is you, not the vendor]
who gets caught." The vendor's legal position is that of "a
contract printer's or a truck driver's."
So how does one become a storage vendor, which is almost like
getting a license to print money, anyway? The Public Access Xanadu
organization, which Ted Nelson still owns, will empower national
licensing organizations, which will in turn license (or franchise)
individual operators, the storage vendors, franchising being the
fastest method to expand without losing control of an enterprise.
And here's where the magic ends and real life begins: "to set up a
Xanadu stand you'll have to put up [some] $200,000 and then HAVE
TO WORK PERSONALLY in the stand, 10 to 12 hours a day... we're
gonna go strictly by McDonald's rule (of personal daily
participation by the owner). Different places will handle the
problem of food and snacks differently though... also my lawyer
reminds me to tell you that this is not an offer to sell, merely a
conjectural discussion."
Though "the objective is to create one mighty server for the whole
world" it by no means follows that all the servers on the network
have to be alike. On the contrary, many different types of servers
will be possible, and many will be present: "computers that are
set up to deliver certain kind of things, render-servers for
graphic images, file-servers for the normal documents and so on,"
all running the same back-end feeder software, delivering
fragments across the network, keeping track of dues. Nor will the
Xanadu organization be creating/publishing the literature, filling
the network with the food for thought and income-fodder. For that
individual entrepreneurs will be needed.
If a future Xanadu vendor believes there is better return in, say,
deliveries (sales) of weather-data, fine, let his set up say, a
'Boreas Real-Time Weather Server' on the network and start
courting weather-data producers to make their results available to
the public by publishing them on his server. Then the vendor can
attract users of such data, and get them to request the data at
whatever intervals they might require, for whatever purposes they
might have, in whatever forms or contexts they might desire.
Thus a following flow of income could be envisioned (provided that
there is a market demand for said type of data): owners of the
weather-images become publishers for a fee proportional to the
physical size of their data on the storage vendor's media. The
storage vendor will wish to maximize his sizeable initial
investment by making his own premises attractive for the public to
visit and appealing to prospective future publishers, who are
looking for suitable/genre-specialized storage sites to publish
at/rent space from. It is in the vendor's self interest to try to
find potential users for the deposited weather data and to promote
use of them, since ultimately he'll be receiving a percentage on
each and every fragment sent to and from his server. Nothing, of
course, hinders the publishers from promoting use of their data
themselves. The publishers receive royalty on each fragment
delivered, proportional to the requested fragment's size, which
accumulates in their account, thus covering the costs of
publication and storage and, hopefully, making a profit. The
users, finally, get to view/use their data and have a shot at
subsequent (part-)royalties on any material that they elect to
enhance via linkage and/or publish themselves (for a fee, etc...).
Furthermore: any user without access to a personal terminal will
be able to open an account at a local Xanadu vending stand, with
facilities for browsing, reading, viewing and printing out the
requested fragments (the facilities meaning primarily high
resolution, high quality, high speed, ergonometric terminals and
peripheral equipment in a "pleasantly painted," futurico-spacey
setting, "the bridge of the Enterprise, [...] with a pleasant
helper in a polyester suit nearby" [not joking]). The monthly bill
will then consist of a basic fee, as well as fees for connect
time, data delivery (data delivery will include royalty on every
fragment), storage fees (if Xanadu disks are being rented) (for
the deposition of private data, mail, etc.), and possible
publication fees, MINUS royalties (if publications have been read,
linked to, or transcluded).
With the system not yet in existence it is difficult to predict
the monthly cost for a Joe or an Adina User. Still, as Nelson
repeatedly points out, the system has to be affordable to the
general public. He's not worried about lack of potential users
either; "his problem is with dealing with the demand [that] he
already has... 100,000 people out there who want it tomorrow,
TOMORROW. The first XU stand will only have 30 ports [modem lines,
with another perhaps 20 terminal points inside the store], and in
six months [the network] may grow to at most 500 ports, 1000
ports, which is not enough to service the people he already has,
already wanting the service, and certainly not enough to service
the number of people who will want it by then." To be exact,
"there are more than 50 people, who have already paid 100 dollars
each for a Xandle, a user-name on the network" (mentioned in LM
87.1 0/-10), the very same one that has yet to come into being,
and then "may yet turn out to be a flop."
Similarly with the critical mass of documents... there is already
so much available online in existing electronic networks. Still,
he'll be out there, "preaching and proselytizing to potential
publishers, trying to find the most leverage in terms of getting
it off the ground. One group [that] he'll be approaching will be
the free-lance photographers, because here is a group [of people]
that have a lot of bits to distribute and no existing channels
except for magazines. So they have to go through editors, spend a
lot of money making portfolios to leave with editors for a time,
and maybe the editor looks at it and maybe he doesn't. So Xanadu
publishing gives them an immediate new way to get their
photographs out there where other people can see them." Camera
owners, do take note.
PAX Front End Demo
------------------
That said, we were then treated to a quickie demo, "made few days
ago," in MacroMind Director (I think), projected off a Macintosh
with color screen. First we saw how an animated sequence of a 1960
Parallel Textface version might have looked on upper-case
alphanumerics-only screens of that time [LM 87.1 4/76], then a
static view of a later QFrame, edge-linked text-tiles [LM 87.1
4/77]. Then "a 'rigged demo,' where only certain parts function,
so you have to know where to point and click; a quickie, very
rudimentary demo of a [modern] Xanadu front-end, of which many
visualizations are possible." The initial image showed three
rectangular buttons arranged horizontally along the upper part of
the black viewport, labelled Journal, Projects, and Publications,
as well as three vertically placed ones along the left edge,
labelled ToDo, Schedule, Coresp (spelled that way).
Clicking on the Projects button on the screen made a menu unfurl,
displaying the following items (invisible from any distance, had
to work real hard to get it all down; may not be exact):
Show Docuverse
Show Personal Collection
Select Endset
Show Linkset
Renegotiate Specs
Show Individual Link
Next, clicking
'Show Docuverse' displayed a space darkness, filled with small
white rectangles of various (4-character-cell at best) sizes.
'Show Personal Collection' showed a subset of that; i.e., most of
the white specs disappeared.
'Select Endset' opened a white square window halfway down the
screen, with the name of the selected document (one of possible
list of docs?) and the name of author in smaller, separate side
rectangles. A third windoid still, below the square one, contained
a type of document 'Technical specifications' or something
similar.
'Show Linkset' displayed a collection of thin blue lines, arranged
in a fan from the document's square to the right-hand edge of
screen. A small rectangle, superimposed across it, told of the
number of recorded links, some 44,600-odd.
'Renegotiate Specs' (specs not supplied) made this fan thinner,
down to some hundred lines. Finally, clicking the
'Show Individual Link' button and then on one of these lines
opened another windoid below the main square one, with the
linkee's name and the type of link made to the original text
('technical comment'). Now, presumably, one could request the
comment or some additional information about it (size, date, etc.)
from the back-end, had there been one in existence nearby (and if
the linkee's name sounded familiar? trustworthy? or whatever-the
sublimal-feeling-selection-method-of-the-day).
That was it. The concluding screen showed large bluish PAX (Public
Access Xanadu) letters, with a zooming take of a street in
perspective inside the 'A.' The 'PAX' was framed by the words
'Welcome Home' above and 'Everyone' below. Weeelll, maybe. Then
again maybe not. I wouldn't know, I've got to keep an appointment
for a fitting of that damn polyester suit.
all double-quoted contributions by Ted Nelson (29%)
all [LM 87.1 chapter/page] pointers refer to the 87.1 edition
Further Reading
---------------
Literary Machines, book by Ted Nelson describing the Xanadu
concept & methodology, latest edition 90.1, new edition coming
shortly, postpaid US$ 25 US (US$ 40 foreign) from Mindful Press,
3020 Bridgeway #295, Sausalito CA 94965
Literary Machines, the 87.1 Macintosh hypertext edition on disk,
available from OWL International Inc., 14218 NE 21st Street,
Bellevue WA 98007
Computer Lib/Dream Machines, by Ted Nelson, a '1987 revised &
updated' reprint of the original 1974 edition, Tempus
Books/Microsoft Press
For information on the forthcoming Xanadu software from AutoDesk
contact Xanadu Operating Company, Palo Alto CA, tel. [+1] (415)
856-4112
To get on the mailing list for PAX developments write to Public
Access Xanadu at the Mindful Press' address above or contact their
EC representative Elisabeth Davenport (c/o Department of
Information Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK tel.
[+44] (041) 552-4400 x3700, fax (041) 553-1393
Explicitly referred to in the lecture:
Alfred Korzybski (an eccentric philosopher whose best known work
is 'Science and Sanity, An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian
Systems and General Semantics,' (1933), last ed. Boston, 1980).
Tomas Kuhn (introduced 'paradigm' in science; wrote 'The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions,' Chicago, 1970)
K. Eric Drexler (shortly re-joining the Xanadu development team,
wrote 'Engines of Creation, The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,'
1986)
Buckminster Fuller, Bertrand Russel - his teen age idols
Xanadu, XU, Xanadu Stand, Parallel Textface, Qframe - trademarks
of XOC Inc.
Macintosh - a trademark of Apple Computer Inc.
Snacks eaten by the author during writing supplied by Goteborgs
Kex AB.
.
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