/tech/ - technology

another old man with delusions of grandeur. I doubt he's psychotic like Terry though. probably alzheimer's or something.

>>1892
It's kind of shocking that someone posting here doesn't know who this man is, to be completely frank.

I wasn't aware of this dude. Based on the wiki page on him, he seems to be the kind who only wants to get the great idea before everyone else so he can inspire others who will actually get it done. I'm not sure how he has or hasn't inspired others, and whether things would have happened the same way without him. Since he started out in philosophy, but ended up having his own views instead of being a philosopher, I'd say his influence was also negligible, in that things would have happened with or without him.

IIRC part of his vision was a system of micro-payments for quality comments, so I despise him.

His work on zz datastructures is actually pretty cool and innovative, I worked on a toy model of them one time for a project, but as whole he hasn't contributed very much beyond that, that has gone unrealized. ZZ structs really are something that deserves further consideration though.

>>1910
also paid access to encrypted documents. I've not heard about the comments but perhaps that too.

>>1901
Meh. I think you could say that about a lot of people. It seems likely that something web-like would or might have happened at the same time, give or take a decade or two, without him, but I think its also fair to suggest that he probably influenced the shape and nature of things here. Not that others didnt of course, and of course not that he shaped it as he would have liked.

As far as taking credit, its somewhat unfortunate that he continues pursuing his singular project, he seems talented enough that he could work on software that is actually needed and useful today. Had xanadu been finished in the 90's perhaps it could have taken over, as it is it seems most of its purpose is already satisfactorily filled by other tools, all of which are entrenched to a degree that ousting them would be difficult, even with a superior replacement.

I don't understand why he sees unaltered transclusions so important to documents, there is not much use for them unless there is context. However, I liked his idea of hypertextualizing every piece of information produced by humans. Imagine watching a movie and being able to see what year that chair in the background was made and what collection it is from right from your player application instead of googling countless review blogs on the web. Also, his hard client-server model is flawed, same thing web suffers from, there were already better forms of decentralized document distribution in the 80's. Also, you should start from Vannevar Bush and Douglas Engelbart before mentioning Ted Nelson.

>>1893
I know who he is, which is exactly why I said that

>>1912
>As far as taking credit, its somewhat unfortunate that he continues pursuing his singular project, he seems talented enough that he could work on software that is actually needed and useful today.

The problem is that his education and professional work is in the fields of philosophy and sociology. He has just enough self-taught information theory and computer science knowledge to fake his way into lucrative consultancies and dazzle prospective underlings, but any decent CS grad with a BSc totally outclasses him in software development skills.

My opinion is that Ted Nelson's Xanadu designs are to computer science what a 10-year-old boy's drawings of giant robots with flamethrower chainsaw hands and rocket boots are to engineering: highly impractical notions that verge on being ridiculous fantasies. I think that the correct response to both situations is a condescending "Well, isn't that interesting!"

>>1944
have you looked at his codes?

To be honest, I've never had a great impression of the quality and skill of random CS students, and I know many many very good programmers who were self taught.

Of course this doesnt mean any random self taught person is inevitably great, but Its hardly a reasonable critique of someones work or abilities.

>>1945
I didn't specify a random CS student. I specified a decent CS grad. I chose my words carefully.

>>1944
If the modern Web is the product of decent CS grad "adults", then I'd rather have the boy's vision.