1. Week 4 LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media Spring 2005 Ian Bogost
Ted Nelson: Xanadu
Week 4
LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media
Spring 2005
Ian Bogost

2. Ted Nelson: Hypertext (1965)
“A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing , and the Indeterminate”
Wedded V. Bush’s memex to digital technology, calling for digital associationist encyclopedic information resource
Coined the term “hypertext”
Architecture of Entry, List, Link
Subversion of hierarchy part of 1960’s frame of mind
Systems became overly complex and never implemented (Xanadu)

3. Nelson’s definition of hypertext (1965)
A body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represened on paper. It may contain summaries, or maps of its contents and their interrelations; it may contain annotations, additions and footnotes from scholars who have examined it….Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world’s written knowledge. However its internal file structure would have to be built to accept growth, change and complex informational arrangements.

4. Xanadu
Nelson began working on non-sequential writing while a graduate student at Harvard
Name references Samuel Coleridge’s opium induced poem Kubla Khan
Published his ideas in 1974 as Computer Lib/Dream Machine
Formed a group to work on the project, which was eventually funded as Autodesk by Xerox Parc
After the group’s collapse, released the Xanadu code as a means to overturn software patents

5. Nelson against the Web
Nelson dislikes the structure of the world wide web
Xanadu allows for files to contain each other, known as transclusion
Considered information retrieval similar to RSS feeds
Nelson’s Xanadu is considered to have been too large of a scope, and still does not work.