#tednelson — Public Fediverse posts

‘The Magical Place of Literary Memory™: Xanadu’
Belinda Barnet
Screening the Past, 20 Dec 2014

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom world so fair,
Vanishes and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other

(Coleridge, cited by Ted Nelson, ‘Dream Machines’, p. 142)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A scholarly and deeply entertaining profile of Ted Nelson and his vision of hypertext by @manjusrii

#hypertext #tednelson #xanadu #media
https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-18-first-release/the-magical-place-of-literary-memory%e2%84%a2-xanadu/

‘The Magical Place of Literary Memory™: Xanadu’
Belinda Barnet
Screening the Past, 20 Dec 2014

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom world so fair,
Vanishes and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other

(Coleridge, cited by Ted Nelson, ‘Dream Machines’, p. 142)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A scholarly and deeply entertaining profile of Ted Nelson and his vision of hypertext by @manjusrii

#hypertext #tednelson #xanadu #media
https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-18-first-release/the-magical-place-of-literary-memory%e2%84%a2-xanadu/

‘The Magical Place of Literary Memory™: Xanadu’
Belinda Barnet
Screening the Past, 20 Dec 2014

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom world so fair,
Vanishes and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other

(Coleridge, cited by Ted Nelson, ‘Dream Machines’, p. 142)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A scholarly and deeply entertaining profile of Ted Nelson and his vision of hypertext by @manjusrii

#hypertext #tednelson #xanadu #media
https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-18-first-release/the-magical-place-of-literary-memory%e2%84%a2-xanadu/

‘The Magical Place of Literary Memory™: Xanadu’
Belinda Barnet
Screening the Past, 20 Dec 2014

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom world so fair,
Vanishes and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other

(Coleridge, cited by Ted Nelson, ‘Dream Machines’, p. 142)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A scholarly and deeply entertaining profile of Ted Nelson and his vision of hypertext by @manjusrii

#hypertext #tednelson #xanadu #media
https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-18-first-release/the-magical-place-of-literary-memory%e2%84%a2-xanadu/

‘The Magical Place of Literary Memory™: Xanadu’
Belinda Barnet
Screening the Past, 20 Dec 2014

Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom world so fair,
Vanishes and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other

(Coleridge, cited by Ted Nelson, ‘Dream Machines’, p. 142)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A scholarly and deeply entertaining profile of Ted Nelson and his vision of hypertext by @manjusrii

#hypertext #tednelson #xanadu #media
https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-18-first-release/the-magical-place-of-literary-memory%e2%84%a2-xanadu/

The Internet We Didn’t Get https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #TedNelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #TedNelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #TedNelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #TedNelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get - Collective human consciousness is full of imagined or mythical dream-like utopias,... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #tednelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get - Collective human consciousness is full of imagined or mythical dream-like utopias,... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #tednelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get - Collective human consciousness is full of imagined or mythical dream-like utopias,... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #tednelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get - Collective human consciousness is full of imagined or mythical dream-like utopias,... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #tednelson #internet #xanadu #web

The Internet We Didn’t Get - Collective human consciousness is full of imagined or mythical dream-like utopias,... - https://hackaday.com/2025/10/02/the-internet-we-didnt-get/ #alternativefuture #internethacks #transclusion #hypertext #tednelson #internet #xanadu #web

Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

@barking 🧵As We May Not Think

Very enjoyable, and great live use of #aswemaythink trail tech!

I smiled at your note on Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort’s ‘New Media Reader’. It’s still a great read and has scholarly glosses — and sometimes full text — of original sources.

https://www.newmediareader.com/about.html

The NMR Book Samples page includes a free link to the excellent chapter on Ted Nelson’s ‘Computer Lib / Dream Machines’.

https://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-21-nelson.pdf

#hypertext #newmedia #tednelson

I contend that the purpose of computers is human freedom.
-- Ted Nelson

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #TedNelson #Computers #Freedom

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #GoblinValley #Utah

It's kinda wild how relevant Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines still feels. I read a passage to my s/o and she replied "yeah people need to get off the internet," not knowing I was reading words written in 1974.

"Somehow the idea is abroad that computer activities are uncreative, as compared, say, with rotating clay against your fingers until it becomes a pot. This is categorically false. Computers involve imagination and creation at the highest level. Computers are an involvement you can really get into, regardless of your trip or your karma. They are toys, they are lools, they are glorious abstractions.

So it you like mental creation, toy trains, or abstractions, computers are for you. If you are interested in democracy and its future, you'd better understand computers. And It you are concerned about power and the way it is being used, and aren't we all right now, the same thing goes."

(Not the aforemention passage; just another one I liked)

#tednelson #dreammachines

@Runkefer @bosak @harrymccracken 🧵Computer Lib

I posted a nomination to The Verge:

The story goes that the first Velvet Underground album sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years, but every copy started a band. Ted Nelson’s self-published two-sided book pushed personal computing, interactive computer graphics — and hypertext - into so many people’s heads so forcefully that it changed the world we live in, like the Velvet Underground.

#TedNelson

Ref https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/01/velvet/

@Runkefer @bosak @harrymccracken 🧵Computer Lib

Yes - Microsoft Press reprinted it ‘trade paperback’ style in 1987.

The ‘New Media Reader’ published a great Computer Lib review and sample:

“Computer Lib / Dream Machines is the most important book in the history of new media.
Nelson’s volume is often called the first personal computer book… This, however, was only one of the many visions, prescient and influential,
offered in the volume.”

#TedNelson #ComputerLib

http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-21-nelson.pdf

@bosak @harrymccracken 🧵Computer Lib

You can still buy a republished 2013 reprint of the original edition directly from Ted for $111 (original text, TN graphics, flip book tabloids layout). It’s great.

But ‘quantities are limited’ and I don’t know if he still has copies. So step right up!

#TedNelson #ComputerLib

https://computerlibbook.com/products/computer-lib-dream-machines

I've realized that vector embeddings used by LLMs remind me of Nelson's Th3 from 1974 Dream Machines. A projection of text “points” into a 3D space which itself is a user-driven visualization of various dimensions contained in the text: https://archive.org/details/computer-lib-dream-machines/page/n58/mode/1up

#hypertext #hypermedia #TedNelson

Ted Nelson said, "To me the right model of information management is a globe. … A globe keeps you oriented. You can find what you want. Turn it. And that’s it.It is self explanatory, self-revelatory, with no interface."
/via #ChronoLink https://mprove.de/chrono3d?q=35.52454,-122.63605&z=4.92&t=44&s=1&i=1/nelson at 6:30

#TedNelson

@raiderrobert

Pooh-Eee

See https://www.acronymfinder.com/PARC-User-Interface-(Ted-Nelson)-(PUI).html

#ShitPost #TedNelson #PUI

@raiderrobert

Pooh-Eee

See https://www.acronymfinder.com/PARC-User-Interface-(Ted-Nelson)-(PUI).html

#ShitPost #TedNelson #PUI

@raiderrobert

Pooh-Eee

See https://www.acronymfinder.com/PARC-User-Interface-(Ted-Nelson)-(PUI).html

#ShitPost #TedNelson #PUI

@raiderrobert

Pooh-Eee

See https://www.acronymfinder.com/PARC-User-Interface-(Ted-Nelson)-(PUI).html

#ShitPost #TedNelson #PUI

@raiderrobert

Pooh-Eee

See https://www.acronymfinder.com/PARC-User-Interface-(Ted-Nelson)-(PUI).html

#ShitPost #TedNelson #PUI

🧵 Ted Nelson vs the technoid vision

"Ladies and gentlemen, the age of prestidigitative presentation and publishing is about to begin. Palpitating presentations, screen-scribbled, will dance to your desire, making manifest the many mysteries of winding wisdom. But if we are to rehumanize an increasingly brutal and disagreeable world, we must step up our efforts. And we must hurry. Hurry. Step right up."

Barnum-Tronics (Dec 1970)
#TedNelson #hypertext

https://archive.org/details/stx_swarthmore-college-bulletin-1970-12/page/12/mode/2up

“The technoid vision, as expressed by various pundits of electronic media, seems to be this: tomorrow's world will be terribly complex, but we won't have to understand it.” — Ted Nelson (1997)

For Nelson, what you see and interact with on a computer screen should be an inspired product of human intelligence, created using new engines of expression, forming an endlessly evolving and deeply intertwingled corpus of literature.

#TedNelson #hypertext

http://tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog2443

As someone who was part of the beginning of the World Wide Web,
Jamie Zawinski is always good for interesting historic tidbits:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/hypertext-emerges-from-his-well-to-shame-the-tech-industry/

Of course I would have loved to see this demonstration:

"He also showed us the most recent version of Xanadu, implemented in Emacs Lisp. "

#www #xanadu #TedNelson #hypertext #emacs

@sf105

IIRC, funding was always a problem.

he thought the future of computing was terminals to servers, not personal computers. this dried up quite a bit of interest/funding as PCs came into focus.

and, like #TedNelson, #Engelbart thought in ways that few others did. they missed much of his wisdom as he was "too early".

i think the biggest blow to his work was the lack of interest by business research labs (Xerox, ATT, IBM, etc.) as they funded mac/pc products instead.

The Internet's forgotten collaborative future:
https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-modern-computer-look-and-feel/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen

#Memex #VannevarBush #Dynabook #AlanKay #ProjectXanadu #TedNelson #Dynamicland #BretVictor

"Everything is deeply intertwingled."

#TedNelson #intertwingled

@BillySmith & btw I was very honored and fortunate to meet and talk to hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson, a few years ago at an event at #InternetArchive headquarters, San Francisco. IA and its founder/director @brewsterkahle are—like Nelson—major inspirations to me; IA a core & constant asset in my life and projects. #BrewsterKahle #InternetArchive c/ @internetarchive #TedNelson #THNelson

@BillySmith ➡️ "I will explain why the problem is not simple, and why the solution (a file structure) must yet be very simple."
— from the foundational document of #hypertext, and of this aspect of the Internet/Web: T. H. Nelson (1965), "A File Structure for The Complex, The Changing and the Indeterminate": https://archive.org/details/nelson-file-structure/mode/1up?view=theater. One of my favorite quotes, and papers; from the #LandmarkPapers category of which I'm quite fond. #THNelson #TedNelson

@gregeganSF Reminds me of a quote from Ted Nelson in “Computer Lib”: “Of course we can build a rocket ship out of tapioca! We already have the tapioca!” #TedNelson

@mdhughes Computer Lib / Dream Machines
by Ted Nelson

https://archive.org/details/ted-nelson-computer-lib-dream-machine

@TheGibson

#TedNelson #ArchiveOrg #Books

When did #TedNelson first introduce the term #micropayments?

https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2000/12/07/the-babbage-of-the-web

(boosts appreciated)

I've been maintaining a list of words coined by #TedNelson and just pushed a bunch of updates, available at https://fangl.es The URL is actually an example of one such word :) #hypertext #hypermedia #xanadu