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From: sdm7g@elvis.med.Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Subject: Re: Letter From Ted Nelson
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Date: Sat, 17 Jun 1995 09:39:59 GMT
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In article <hbaker-1406950011580001@192.0.2.1>,
Henry Baker <hbaker@netcom.com> wrote:

>------
>
>Steven Majewski sdm7g@virginia.edu:
>> Or, to quote Steve Jobs' mantra ( when pushing the Mac development
>> team, as quoted in Steve Levy's _Insanely_Great_ ) : "Artists Ship!" 
>
>Of course this quote of Steve Jobs is _very_ wrong.  It takes time -- sometimes
>quite a lot of time -- before the unthinkable gradually becomes the obvious.
>During that time, one can waste huge amounts of one's own time and other
>people's money trying to force the future.  Shipping product isn't the problem,
>but getting people to buy is.  The business world is littered with the carcasses
>of those who were right, but too early.
>

 The business world is *also* littered with the carcasses of those who
where right, but were too late. A lot of folks are desperate for an
80% solution. Some are so desperate for an 80% solution, that they'll
take a 40% solution, and convince themselves it's a 60% solution! :-)
In business, as in war - to quote General Nathan Bedford Forrest - what
counts is "getting there firstest with the mostest!" 
  Note that BOTH are important: getting there first with insufficient
force is usually fatal when the other side catches up with you. But if
you're going to come in second, you had better have something
*substantially* better than the competition! 
  My only complaint with Richard Gabriel's analysis [ His contrast of 
the NJ vs MIT design approaches in "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big." 
<http://minsky.med.virginia.edu/sdm7g/LangCrit/gabriel/> ] is that he
doesn't stress that finding the right mean is *the* difficult design problem. 


>If you really think that Cyberspace would have happened without visionaries
>like Ted Nelson, you're very naive about how hard it is to come up with a
>truly novel thought.

>The whole point of culture and progress is to allow the next generation to
>avoid making all the mistakes of the past and to provide the conceptual
>framework (Weltenschaung (sp??)) for seeing the world with new eyes.  This
>is not to take anything away from the cleverness of the new generation, but
>the new generation has no business belittling the cleverness of the generation
>that provided them with this framework which now makes everything obvious.
>
>Methinks you take too much for granted...
>

 I have the greatest respect for Ted Nelson's vision - I've been a fan 
since first reading "Dream Machines/Computer Lib". But part of culture
and progress and learning to avoid mistakes is looking critically at
ones heros and trying to learn from their mistakes. 
 Any casual observer, who was thrilled when hearing that he finally
had some financial backing ( from Audodesk ) to make those visions
real, hass got to wonder : what happened? Why has Ted Nelson been
an inspiration to others, but has had seemingly little role in building
cyberspace ? 
 It was with hope of learning some of this history that I bought a 
copy of WIRED when I saw "The Curse of Xanadu" story on the cover. 
 Now, after seeing a reference in this thread on how to get a copy
of Ted Nelson's reply to that article ( whish I assume started this
thread ), I see that there are reasons to believe that it was not
an accurate account of that history.  However, I don't see it as
quite the hatchett job that Ted Nelson describes - considering how
difficult it is to sift thru differing accounts, and considering 
the difficulty for a non-technical journalist in evaluating much 
of that evidence, I don't think it's necessary to ascribe malice
to Gary Wolf's portrayal -- merely the journalists need for a "hook"
for the narritive. 
  Without a third independent account, I have no way of judging the
questions of fact raised in this dispute, except that both accounts
give support to the notion that the secrecy which shrouded aspects
of the projects development may have been counterproductive. 
( Nelson defends the need for secrecy, but thereby indirectly 
confirms part of Wolf's account in that respect. ) 

[ A recent example I am reminded of is that of Michael Barnsley
  and his work on fractal image compression. He has made a number
  of claims about his techniques which have been disputed by others -
  but the proprietary nature of those techniques has prevented the
  claims from being independently tested. I haven't been following
  that topic for some time, so I don't know if that description 
  is still valid. ] 


 I wouldn't accept Jobs'"artists ship"  statement if it is read as 
saying that shipping a product is the ONLY thing. Jobs, after all,
was inspired by the Xerox PARC research. Levy explicitly draws the
contrast with the Xerox researchers, who's 'PRODUCT' is research
reports. ( I'll be the last person to knock research: NIH and UVA
have been feeding me for the last 6 years! ) 
 But surely, even where the 'product' is ideas, effectiveness
is a function of both the originality and utility of the ideas,
AND the number of people reached. Sometimes, that reach is 
indirect, thru grad-students or other third parties, and so it
can be difficult to measure. But surely, an original thought that
you tell to no-one has little effect on  the world! 
  One reason that I don't read the Wolf article as quite a hatchett
job is that it is quite clear about the many people who have been
inspired by Ted Nelson's vision. In that respect, he has to be
judged a success - even if we never see Xanadu ever built. 

 I don't deny that he WAS ahead of his time. The question is 
where is he and Xanadu now? ( And is there some sort of inherent
conflict between being a visionary and being a producer ? ) 

The fact that the Wolf article in WIRED wasn't an honest inquiry
only leaves me MORE curious ! 



---|  Steven D. Majewski   (804-982-0831)  <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU>  |---
---|  Computer Systems Engineer          University of Virginia  |---
---|  Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics  |---
---|  Box 449 Health Science Center    Charlottesville,VA 22908  |---
[ Programming Language Critiques Page - including some of Henry Baker's
wonderful papers: <http://minsky.med.virginia.edu/sdm7g/LangCrit/> ]
