Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.culture.internet,soc.history.science,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.icon,alt.hypertext,alt.wired
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!uhog.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!world!Eastgate
From: Eastgate@world.std.com (Mark Bernstein)
Subject: Re: Letter From Ted Nelson
Message-ID: <D9t2v3.Fty@world.std.com>
Keywords: hypertext, xanadu
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
References: <3r29km$m7p@crl11.crl.com>
Distribution: inet
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 13:59:27 GMT
Lines: 44
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:18021 comp.lang.icon:3148


Andrea Chen, responding to Ted Nelson's open letter, warns that

> The article [in WIRED] was correct in stating that he runs the danger  
> of becoming a zany footnote in the history of computing.

While Nelson is assuredly unusual and arguably zany, there is no 
likelihood that he can or will be dismissed as a footnote.

- Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart are, without question, the parents of 
hypertext and hypermedia. The current success of hypermedia software, in 
integrated systems, published hypertext literature, and in the web, is 
without question among the most striking developments of the past decade, 
and can be traced directly to Xanadu (Nelson) and NLS/Augment (Engelbart).

- Computer Lib/Dream Machines was a truly brilliant book which inspired 
an entire generation of computer scientists. Remember that, when Nelson's 
book first appeared, its central claim

	YOU CAN -- AND MUST -- OWN A COMPUTER, NOW

was outrageous and zany, and its manifesto that computers could and would 
be liberating engines of creation anticipated the work of Haraway, 
Turkle, Bruckman, Drexler, and many others.

- The World Wide Web is not Xanadu, but to many of us who have been 
working on hypertext systems for many years (and who are often far from 
satisfied with the web), the arrival of the Web does feel like a first 
sighting of a promised land. 

- Nelson is also responsible for developing or popularizing a number of 
things we take for granted every day: retail computer stores, net cafes, 
computers as literary machines, animated icons.

Yes, all of us have wanted to understand technical issues in Xanadu that 
Nelson has been unwilling or unable to explain. Yes, we may easily 
quibble about dates, or whether Nelson took this system seriously enough 
or was too hostile to that system. But this is a *very* impressive record 
of accomplishment.
-- 
Mark Bernstein
Eastgate Systems, Inc.   134 Main Street   Watertown MA 02172 USA
voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA   +1(617) 924-9044
Eastgate@world.std.com    Compuserve: 76146,262    AppleLink:Eastgate 
