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#THNelson

tmccormicktmccormick@social.coop
2023-01-06

@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

English: Ted Nelson gives a presentation on Project Xanadu for SuperHappyDevHouse at The Tech Museum of Innovation on February 19th, 2011.Internet Archive headquarters, San Francisco.
tmccormicktmccormick@social.coop
2023-01-06

@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": archive.org/details/nelson-fil. One of my favorite quotes, and papers; from the #LandmarkPapers category of which I'm quite fond. #THNelson #TedNelson

"A File Structure for The Complex, The Changing and the Indeterminate." T. H. Nelson Vassar College, Poug: esosie, N.Y. 1962, AUG. 24/ 4.2: THE KINDS OF FILE structures required if we are to use the computer for personal files and as an adjunct to creativity are wholly different in character from those customary in business and scientific data processing. They need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives, and thorough internal documentation. The original idea was to make a file for writers and scientists, much like the personal side of Bush's Memex, that would do the things such people need with the richness they would want. But there are so many possible specific functions that the mind reels. These uses and considerations become so complex that the only answer is a simple and generalized building-block structure, user-oriented and wholly general-purpose.… to the user it acts like a multifarious, polymorphic, many-dimensional, infinite blackboard." "it is almost everywhere necessary to deal with deep structural changes in the arrangements of ideas and things… the investigation gathered generality, however, and has eventuated in a number of ideas...

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