Ted Nelson

By anders pearson 28 Feb 2004

today i got to go to meet <a href=”http://ted.hyperland.com/“>Ted Nelson</a>, the inventor of <a href=”http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hypertext”>hypertext</a> and visionary behind <a href=”http://xanadu.com/“>project xanadu</a>, the “<a href=”http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html”>longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing</a>.”

he was at columbia giving a workshop on <a href=”http://xanadu.com/zigzag/ZZdnld/“>ZigZag</a>, which is… well… after three hours of listening to Ted and playing with it, i’m still not sure exactly what to call it. it’s sort of an advanced data structure that Ted believes can be used to hold any kind of structure whatsoever. sort of a relational database exploded into multiple dimensions. but also a basis for a document model, or possibly a filesystem.

the man is clearly brilliant, if somewhat out there. he literally sees software design as a branch of filmmaking. much of his work is motivated by the extremely non-linear way that he thinks and his hatred of hierarchies (i never did get the chance to ask him what he thought about BeFS and <a href=”http://www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html”>ReiserFS</a>) and the limitations of paper (and computer representations of paper). unfortunately, he isn’t a programmer himself and he seems to have had personality conflicts with many of the programmers that he’s worked with, resulting in a long string of half-finished projects. the personality conflicts i think were because he views himself as an artist and, like Orson Wells or Frank Lloyd Wright, insists on having complete control over every single minute detail of his creations.

i don’t really have a point. while he may never get around to actually producing anything directly usable, he has some really fascinating ideas, so i think he’s worth paying attention to.

Tags: ted nelson hypertext xanadu vaporware