(Originally published on Newsbytes Daily and in the "BYTE/BIX Special Report: West Coast Computer Faire" newsletter, 1988)
by Jeff Merron That's all there was to the story I sent in. I hinted at how bizarre the Nelson's presentation was, but didn't go into detail, because I didn't understand it. (Still don't.) There were some people surrounding Nelson dressed in what appeared to be Roman Toga candidas. Everyone in the room who wasn't worshipping Nelson (there weren't too many of them) seemed genuinely interested -- Nelson was considered brilliant and strange, but he made pronouncements about Xanadu that were so simple and lofty I didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't like Hypertext was such an extraordinary idea back in those pre-Web days, because Apple had already released HyperCard, which made it relatively easy to create documents with all kinds of links and all kinds of data (text, images, animation, etc.) And there was tremendous skepticism about Xanadu, since even as early as 1988 it had a long history of hype, but nobody had seen it. The story I wrote was posted on Newsbytes Daily a day or two after I submitted it to my editor. Newsbytes Daily was part of BIX, Byte's online service. This delay wasn't due to technical reasons -- it was simply because I filed the story on a weekend, and my editor didn't see any reason to rush. I spun eight or so stories out of this conference, with the topics including HyperCard, "desktop presentations," and Windows.
| More on the Xanadu project: Wikipedia: Project Xanadu Wired: "The Curse of Xanadu," by Gary Wolf (June 1995) Project Xanadu (The Project's Home Page) Review of Computer Lib/Dream Machines, by Theodor H. Nelson (aka Ted Nelson), published in the second issue of Byte, Sept-Oct. 1975 More about Byte and BIX: Wikipedia: Byte (magazine) Byte (sort of) -- Would love to see some real Byte archives, from the best days of the magazine Langa.com: The Web site of Fred Langa, who was editor-in-chief of Byte back in the late 1980s. He hired me to work as a news editor at Byte in 1987. A good guy. |