Theodore (Ted) Nelson

Ted Nelson is a visionary who is credited with coining the term hypertext. His book Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Mindful Press) described the importance of hypertext systems. He expanded this concept by mapping out a distributed interlinked hypertest system he called Xanadu, in which readers could follow their interests over a network to wherever relevant resources resided. Fruthermore, anyone could publish their work in this interlinked system. The World Wide Web bears an uncanny resemblance to some essential features of Xanadu, which is no coincidence; some of the Web's developers acknowledge that Nelson's ideas influenced them strongly. There is a Web location called Xanadu devoted to Nelson's ideas. Nelson notes that networked hypermedia goes beyond a new technical system; it has more radical implication because it promotes

populism (availability to all authors at low cost),
pluralism (support of many points of view),
unorthodoxy (encouragement of controversial subjects), and
universalism (ideas spread in spite of geographical or other boundries.

From "World Wide Web Design Guide", Stephan Wilson, Hayden Books, 1995, p. 6

See also Nelson's column in CACM.
Letzte Änderung: Thu Aug 10 04:27:03 2000