Xanadu Project

Newsflash! There is a working demo of Xanadu http://xanadu.com/

52 year release cycle. Gotta be a record.

The discussion on this page contained much vitriolic name-calling and mouthing off, but very little signal. I've attempted to clarify the definition and refactor the discussion.

Xanadu is an overall paradigm, invented by TedNelson - a general model for computer use, based on sideways connections among documents and files. This paradigm is especially concerned with electronic publishing, but covers all aspects of storing, presenting and working with information. It is a unifying, non-hierarchical ordering system for information, including electronic publishing, personal work, organization of files, corporate work and groupware.

It started around 1960 and has been characterized by some as holding the record for "vaporware" or "almostware". (wikpeida says 63 the birthdate of Sheridan)

Xanadu has been released as OpenSource. For more information, see Udanax (http://www.udanax.com/), and the Xanatalk Wiki (http://www.timecastle.net/v/xanatalk/FrontPage (BrokenLink 20080504)).

A new implementation of the UdanaxGold? design, called Abora, is currently underway: http://www.abora.org/ This is now a page about care for older skin!! 20140825

There is also now a comprehensive attempt to document the history, processes and design of the earlier Xanadu work, the Sunless-Sea CyberArchaeology? Project - http://www.sunless-sea.net/

If the success/failure of software projects intrigues you at all, you might want to spend the time to read the Wired article about Xanadu and TedNelson's response to it: TheCurseOfXanadu.

Related: MemexVision

Computers do not go "sideways". They just get another document. ALL the computers did that. References are nice. But a button is different from "Hypertext" (as punctuation) which did not precede the mouse or the Mac. All the F keys (or N for next) were a different era. The era of "buttons". Even though labyrinths had existed, a big document; It was not uncountable Text or "prose". Hypertext changed human language. People recently claimed a lot of projects that never existed or were later updated.

Hypertext was my proposed standard. Blue Links and Search engines. Together. It was one invention and a specific standard. The lingua franca of the network age. Including indeterminate page length (which mysteriously got into the design) They missed the back button though and I requested that in 92 by email from a friend's account At U.T. Austin.

Now people try to claim the word 'hyper' and the concept separately, The invention was putting them all together into the world wide web. Google Ngram shows hypertext, hyper text, hyper document and hyperdocument to be nonexistent or flat until 88 and "hypermail" was erased from 88 to 93 (I saw it.)

If Hypertext was ever reported or in the language I would have used another term to avoid confusion. Then everyone would be arguing over "Supratext" (which is flat 0 on Google Ngram) So I invented that too.

Tim Sheridan

Xanadu was one of the fish that didn't make it.

Can you provide any evidence that you invented hypertext?

Yes. Look above. ALL computers get stuff with button. They are trying to blur Hypertext with "wowy zowie computer document stuff". Hypertext is blue links. I chose blue because it was similar to black but readable. They did it my way.

Facts: I asked for it to be built in Geneva... . Why? Because It was symbolic. They were neutral in the war. I wanted it to be international so the world would be a part of it. (I didn't go to apple because it was too big for a corporation -I later found out they were already trying to get rid of Steve Jobs after the Macintosh. "thanks for the ideas man, don't let the door hit you on the way out.") There is no "evidence of Hypertext87 other than someone typed up a web document in 2012. And in that document they call HyperCard (which had no hypertext) "IT". That was "It". But not what I invented. You do not really need more evidence. I waited a long time because I knew people would claim this and that. They will. There was nothing "87" until I revealed that I invented it in 87. But there was nobody for 23 years.

I simply see no evidence that anyone had blue hyperlinks or hypertext databases. Nobody had the mouse anyway. But if you want evidence you will have to wait till they declassify. They have it. They could not have done every single thing I asked if there was not a transcript. Do you think I could hold a meeting in a congressional workspace and not get recorded?

The evidence is that nobody ever claimed a thing until I announced the invention. They were asking who invented the internet in 2000. Didn't people hear about that?

Someone will eventually claim a secret project. Oh wait that was me. Someone will eventually emulate that.

Tim

That sounds purely anecdotal, and your repetition of some unspecified "they" sounds conspiratorially paranoid. Is there any independent evidence -- outside of your say-so -- that you invented hypertext, blue links, et al? To put it bluntly, how do we know your claim isn't fantasy or delusion?

Hi, The answer is that nobody else has ever said they invented hypertext. On Wikipedia in 2011-12 Wiki announced that many people asked Tim Lee to write the hypertext proposal. They were requested because I asked the US to work with Cern in Geneva. To "talk it up" and get international cooperation for what was admittedly something way bigger than anyone appreciated. A change in human language. The Bible is written in hyper text now. They called or emailed Geneva and got the discussion going as asked. They reported that a whole groups of people asked for the proposal to be drafter and a prototype created (adding clickable text to a word processor). Yes it was a slow way to do it But if I had called apple we could have had it it sooner. Just [open document] when you click on a word. it would have taken then days. I felt the browser was so earth shattering that it required unbiased people to work on public software. We see today the results of Google hiding everyone's websites. Global collapses. Look at the US in 2008-9. Look at the problems from corporatism on the web.

Then In Scientific American Tim Lee claimed it "went live on his desk". Not that he invented it.

The proof is that nobody else claims it. The working group asked Tim Lee to write up the proposal. In schentific american he says the web went live on his desktop. And nelson thought it was a bad idea (in 1995) Cerf was working on it after 88. Also they named it what i named it. The internet needs its inventor. There are a lot of problems that nobody could solve in 1987 and there are problems today. The world wide web is only the beginning. The internet is half built. The next phase is more complicated. The web has been too vulnerable to fraud.(does your page show up on google? Not if your selling somthing. Others cheat their way tpmthe top. I know. They are doing it to me. If people do not respect the trillion dollar man. Or even the billion dollar patent (mine 7415982) they are gling to make a lot of waves economically, soialy, politically. The internet is like a loaded gun in the hands of a child society. The old world has passed away. We are not ready without the real guadance. (people will paraphraise this) The Democracy has never existed in a hypertext age before. The internet chalangesnthe concept of governemnt, markets, borders. The society that did not invent the wen will not be able to comtroll it. You need somthing more. They are grifting my patent. Making vapes with a chamber an dvent hole. Jamming emails. Vandalizing services. Cheating search listings. Obama announced that the U.S. Will regulate. But iThere is no room for compromose. Either they cheat you or they dont. Either we protect rights or we fail. The web was an act of god. I worked for about 4 years on computors and graph thepry and gui interfaces and AI before setteling on the core problem of crowd sourcing the information age.

I was 19 when i realized my trs80 needed a lot more data than I could provide. I was 23 when i figured out that clicking on words completed the written word. It was the greatest change to human language since hieroglyphics or the printing press. And it made a database of everything possible --now you would not have to write down the location of things. Pow. It was all completed on one day in 87. i went home and said "i discovered the future of communication". But to get there you had to be me, and care about the things i cared about. You had to blow off ball games, cubs, dances and focus on pure information. The elements of human consciousness. All kinds of thigs that eventually lead to the recognition of the core problem of electronic communication. That people need to publish and be found.

Now the problem is homesty, fair trade and human rights. (Terrorists have rigged web.com to delete my company emails.) There are economic and racial issues. Humanity is delicate. They like thigns a certian way. But they could not invent the web. I did that 20 years after Arpanet (a distributed telegraph system that did electronic postal delivery) The web is different. It is the society. And people do not know how to control it. It has been a long sad collapse. I need everyones help if we are to complete the work.

Tim email Info@theubie.com

Sure, Tim. Sure.

It was claimed that Xanadu's security model is broken because it is based on AccessControlLists, which allegedly do not scale. See CapabilitySecurityModel. However someone responded:
And in fact, the model in UdanaxGold? is based on a CapabilitySecurityModel, at least in part. To quote Xanadu Information Architecture'' , Chapter 3 (http://www.sunless-sea.net/XanaduInfoArch/Chapter3):

"Connecting to a Xanadu system does not require logging in. Any person may obtain a connection at any time. Documents, however, are protected by Clubs. Clubs are the mechanism that provides authority to act in a Xanadu system. To access a document that is readable to the DocReaders? club, the user must first obtain the authority to act on behalf of that club. [emphasis added]

One way to obtain the authorities of a Club is by logging in to the club. To support this, every Club has an associated Locksmith.

A Locksmith is a provider of Locks. Locks are objects that support a given authentication policy. [emphasis added] If you are able to satisfy the requirements of the Lock, you can log in to the corresponding Club. Every connection has an associated current KeyMaster? that holds the connection's active authorities."

While the terminology is rather peculiar - the developers (not just TedNelson) decided to avoid using any overloaded terms, hence the heavy use of neologisms - it seems to me that it decribes a system that is a hybrid of both Capabilities and ACLs.
"In other words, they chose to use an ACL system. Passwords are capabilities so any system that uses passwords for initial user entry is necessarily an ACL-caps hybrid. Pure ACL systems are impossible."
It was claimed that "Xanadu is completely obsolete as a system since it doesn't take into account such fundamental things as decentralization and authentication. Xanadu shows its decrepitude by being incompatible with PeerToPeer and never mentioning cryptography."
"As it turns out, the models of computation and secure access that fit most naturally with Xanadu are the functional calculus and AccessControlLists."
When I get to it, I'll try to write a rebuttal under GeneralEnfiladeTheory. -- JayOsako
"The mere notion of a single global flat address space should have raised red flags. Nelson hung on to the ludicrous notion of a global address space for decades. See NameSpace ideals for more on this issue."
It is 'global' in the sense of 'universal', not in the sense of 'monolithic'. The tumbler system was designed from the first to partition the document space (the usual analogy is to the Dewey Decimal System, which branches as needed). Each node would have it's own tumbler root, and can operate autonomously from the rest of Xanadu.
Apparently, you don't understand what global means. The fact that one can create a private network doesn't invalidate the observation that IPs form a single global address space. Local doesn't mean that you can create a new global address space after you've cut yourself off in your own universe. No, local means that you don't give a damn about the rest of the global address space even though you're connected to it. Local means there is no root! Because in a local system you can't justify needing global information (such as a "root") to access local data.
The difference between a flat and a hierarchical namespace is that the hierarchical namespace is recursive and infinitely extensible. Xanadu's tumbler system is not, so it is flat, one-dimensional.

External Links

http://xanadu.com.au/ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html (a not-so-flattering review)