Wow, I just dug up my old #ZigZag (https://www.nongnu.org/gzz/gi/gi.html) diskette. I was at one of Roger Gregory's house parties in the Presidio, and #TedNelson demonstrated this software on a 486 resting on the floor. He then handed out these diskettes to everyone. I believe it's a RedHat 6 boot floppy that auto-runs his programme, but it's probably just inert rust now. I'll have to see if I know someone with imaging equipment.

I can't recall where I got the Esther Dyson newsletter, but I think it may have been a talk she gave somewhere.

Conoce a Ted Nelson. Acuñó "hipertexto" en 1965 y soñó con #xanadu, una web mucho más avanzada. Un visionario incomprendido que inspiró Internet. Su legado retro te sorprenderá #tednelson #hipertexto #retrocomputingmx #historiadelaweb

https://retrocomputingmx.com/mgz6

I contend that the purpose of computers is human freedom.
-- Ted Nelson

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #TedNelson #Computers #Freedom

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #GoblinValley #Utah

It's kinda wild how relevant Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines still feels. I read a passage to my s/o and she replied "yeah people need to get off the internet," not knowing I was reading words written in 1974.

"Somehow the idea is abroad that computer activities are uncreative, as compared, say, with rotating clay against your fingers until it becomes a pot. This is categorically false. Computers involve imagination and creation at the highest level. Computers are an involvement you can really get into, regardless of your trip or your karma. They are toys, they are lools, they are glorious abstractions.

So it you like mental creation, toy trains, or abstractions, computers are for you. If you are interested in democracy and its future, you'd better understand computers. And It you are concerned about power and the way it is being used, and aren't we all right now, the same thing goes."

(Not the aforemention passage; just another one I liked)

#tednelson #dreammachines

I was writing a presentation and I wished I’d had a parallel document with stage notes; and in the presentation I wished I could link to values in the founders biography or media clips from recent town halls; and I wished I could link to a document of themes and tropes for emergent rhetorical callbacks to put into the stage notes.

And for a brief moment I saw the dream of Ted Nelson’s “Xanadu.” And then I looked back at the Stone Age tools before me like Caesar at Alexander’s tomb, and lamented.

#hypermedia #xanadu #tednelson #productivity #authoring