Ted Nelson is still an angry young man and, I believe very much that he
is so with good reason. I had the pleasure and shared his frustration on
two occasions, first time when he spoke at the 2000 "The Unfinished
Revolution" Colloquium, later at a small session at SRI where some
participants made a valiant effort to get the two friends, Ted Nelson
and Doug Engelbart, to team up, which, unfortunately for the world, they
never did. ("What does Doug mean with Bootstrapping?" Ted asked
rhetorically - remember, Jack?) It seems to me that they are both the
weaker for it. (01)
The paper referred to does, I believe, some correction for the sake of
accuracy and apparently unrealized usefulness. Ted wrote, (02)
"Hypertext, as suddenly adapted to the Internet by Berners-Lee and then
Andreessen, is still the paper model! Its long rectangular sheets, aptly
called "pages", can be escaped only by one-way links. There can be no
marginal notes. There can be no annotation (at least not in the deep
structure)." (03)
To be sure, I am not clear on what's meant by deep structure, but there
can be marginal notes, but somehow we don't hear much about that. (04)
Personally, I was particularly struck by the part about porogramming and
programmers: (05)
"But nobody seems to have noticed what the Macintosh took away. (06)
"It took away THE RIGHT TO PROGRAM. (07)
"If you bought an Apple II, you could begin programming it right out of
the box. I have friends who bought the Apple II without knowing what
programming was, and became professional programmers almost overnight.
The system was clean and simple and allowed you to do graphics. (08)
"But the Macintosh (and now the Windows PC) are another story. And the
story is simple: PROGRAMMING IS ONLY FOR OFFICIAL REGISTERED
'DEVELOPERS'. (09)
"The Official Registered Developers, who made deals with Apple and later
Microsoft, are the only ones who can do the magic now. This is not in
the intrinsic nature of today's computers. It is in the intrinsic nature
of today's Deals. Negotiate with Apple or Microsoft, pay them money or
other favors, and they will let you know what you need in order to
create 'applications'." (010)
You did not need be a man of the stature of Doug or Ted in the world of
computing to perceive that things were going wrong. I was a simple
college teacher without any claim to fame whatsoever when I noticed that
and wrote about it in the late eighties, early nineties. Allow me to
quote myself from those days: (011)
"... a close electronic assistant for our neural brain [meaning a pocket
computer] can help us quickly sift chaff from wheat and do so anytime we
want to. However, to employ such help we must know how to use it. And
that includes knowing how to program, believe it or not. (012)
"Those not skilled in reading and writing are more likely to be in the
control of others. Unless we know how to make and read programs, we
shall perforce depend on programs made by others - experts, presumably,
at writing programs, and, if we are lucky, experts at solving exactly
those problems we happen to encounter. Their algorithms will solve our
problems the way they see them or, and here s one mean rub, wish to see
them. There will be no opportunity to amend a computer program to suit
one''s very personal needs, to solve problems in one's own way.
Future-God shall be the Programmer. And insofar we have not been
brainwashed yet we shall be soon. (013)
"Programmer, Thy Will Be Done." (014)
[Above from "Literacy Across the Curriculum, Dawson College, 4:1 (Nov.
1987, p.2 and republished in "Current Notes" [An Atari ST monthly],
Sept. 1993, p. 33] (015)
Checking my stuff further, I found, (016)
"The concept of programs that can be modified by users has been around
for some time. "Software," I read more than ten years ago, "can be made
so simple that computer owners can modify programs to their taste
without knowing anything about bits and bytes. 'Our whole interest,'
said Apple's Kay, 'is letting ordinary people make tools for themselves.
In the future you'll get an application out of the box and, after a
couple of weeks, you'll have some ideas and change it'." (017)
[I have this at www.fleabyte.org/flb-8.html where the source of McKay's
comment is given.] (018)
Now, Ted has many ideas in his head I am not at all clear about and
today one must be a fortune to buy one of his books. That does not help. (019)
I could go on and on [and more can be found in Fleabyte] but what is the
use? My URL is coming up for renewal this December and I am thinking of
just chucking it. I feel very bad about that, but what is the use
complaining. That I'll leave to the luminaries. (020)
Henry (021)
On Wed, 2003-11-12 at 17:26, Matthew A. Schneider wrote:
> Has anyone seen this:
> http://ted.hyperland.com/TQdox/zifty.d9-TQframer.html <== link from Ted
> Nelson's page: http://ted.hyperland.com/ I haven't played around with it
> much but it looks pretty cool.
>
> Matt
--
Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca> (022)
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