1	#!/usr/bin/env sh
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 3	cat << % 
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 5	p {white-space:inherit;display:block}
 6	h2 {text-align:center;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:1lh}
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 8	.articulated {letter-spacing:.5ch}
 9	.uh {opacity:.5;font-style:italic}
10	.ted p,
11	.interviewer p{margin-left:0ch;text-indent:2ch}
12	.ted::before {content:"Ted Nelson: "}
13	.interviewer::before {content:"interviewer: "}
14	p::before{opacity:.5;}
15	</style>
16	<p>Over almost two decades, Ted Nelson has published a generous amount of videos on his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@TheTedNelson">youtube channel</a>, bellow are some of my favourites in chronological order of their recordings. It includes some published from other channels.</p>
17	
18	
19	<!-- Some uploads are records from the past while others are filmed for the upload. It is interresting to notice the change of speech accross those different To my understanding of Ted Nelson, he never -->
20	
21	<h1>What is a Hacker? (first Hacker Conf, 1984)</h1>
22	
23	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p0pFpG3Jq2A?si=P_ZgznwAc_kKhy6j"></iframe>
24	
25	<details>
26		<summary>transcript</summary>
27	<p class="interviewer">What is a hacker to you ?</p>
28	<p class="ted">What is a hacker to me ? To me, nobody hacks Nelson. <span style="opacity:.5">[laugh]</span> A hacker is a very odd word, it just means one who hacks. I came up with a definition I like the other day which is : someone who is so interested in things that they don't need to be pushed to investigate them rather thoroughly.  And that's what it means to hack a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)">lisp</a>, to hack <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc">visicalc</a>, you can even hack <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC">basic</a> if you do it in the right way.</p>
29	<p class="interviewer">Would you consider yourself a hacker ?</p>
30	<p class="ted">No.</p>
31	<p class="interviewer">Why not ?</p>
32	<p class="ted">Uh… unfortunately I'm a writer because i have a lot to say, I don't like writing I prefer programming but I'm a very bad programmer and actually writing programs is very low on my personal list of priorities.  Getting the Xanadu system up, which is now programmed by other people has been my principal priority for the last 24 years. Now that's about to start <span class="uh">uh</span> maybe i'll have time to do a little spare program.</p>
33	<p class="interviewer">What is hacking all about ?</p>
34	<p class="ted">What is hacking all about ? It's all about whatever it's doing.  It's everything you ever wanted a computer to be. It's making love, it's, it's, it's being aggressive, it's <span class="uh">uh</span> stalking into the unknown and seizing the unknown and kicking it and finding out that it's exactly what you didn't intend. And all of these things either in the, <span class="uh">uh</span> peculiar imagined world of the adventure game or in the investigation of an operating system or programming language, all of these are effectively the same. In fact adventure games are really <span class="uh">uh</span> allegorical system, allegorical presentations of hackers.  Because people who like adventure games are computer types. I can't stand adventure games because you have to keep trying things out in this boring methodical way, but i'm not interested in that, some people are.</p>
35	</details>
36	
37	<h1>Memex, Doug, and the paperless office (2006)</h1>
38	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6aJCK5ih09A?si=7dMC2EaYgkkmgoqf" title="YouTube video player" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
39	
40	<h1>on Zigzag data structures (2008)</h1>
41	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WEj9vqVvHPc?si=tpNQ5SUrppjBm9fG"></iframe>
42	
43	<h1> Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space (2008 ?)</h1>
44	<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/En_2T7KH6RA?si=Wq2JxZ8wd8soG5z6" title="YouTube video player" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
45	
46	<h1>Future of Text 2013 : Ted Nelson</h1>
47	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SCoivDX3DFY?si=j0uyeFfNP7utLrcJ" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
48	<details>
49		<summary>partial transcript</summary>
50		$(cat ~/medias/texte/transcripts/Future_of_Text_2013_Ted_Nelson_transcript.html)
51	</details>
52	
53	<h1>New Game in Town (2016)</h1>
54	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/72M5kcnAL-4?si=Prxx3UXaPpLBSSgg" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
55	
56	<h1>Today Is Yesterday's Tommorrow</h1>
57	<p>Written and tuned by Ted, circa 2015</p>
58	<h2>2020</h2>
59	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VmEuY15I7qs?si=ytpi-lZrZpD6KY_G" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
60	<h2>2021</h2>
61	<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gF9XIsavloI?si=kuRSgd_eBuqQUp-Q" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
62	<details open>
63		<summary>lyrics</summary>
64	<p>Today, is yesterday's tomorrow</p>
65	<p>Tomorow, today will be yesterday</p>
66	<p>So let's be careful what we borrow</p>
67	<p>That someday someone's gonna have to pay <span class="uh">pum, pum</span></p>
68	<p>Someday, it'll all have been reconned</p>
69	<p>And others who don't care will have their way</p>
70	<p>So do not waste a precious second</p>
71	<p>Of now of life, of loving, of today <span class="uh">pum, pum</span></p>
72	<p>Don't ask, for whom the bell is tolling</p>
73	<p>Just one of many tolls along the way</p>
74	<p>As long as you and I keep rolling</p>
75	<p>The bells of hell won't get to have their say <span class="uh">pum, pum, pum… pum</span></p>
76	</details>
77	
78	%

What is a hacker to you ?

What is a hacker to me ? To me, nobody hacks Nelson. [laugh] A hacker is a very odd word, it just means one who hacks. I came up with a definition I like the other day which is : someone who is so interested in things that they don't need to be pushed to investigate them rather thoroughly. And that's what it means to hack a lisp, to hack visicalc, you can even hack basic if you do it in the right way.

Would you consider yourself a hacker ?

No.

Why not ?

Uh… unfortunately I'm a writer because i have a lot to say, I don't like writing I prefer programming but I'm a very bad programmer and actually writing programs is very low on my personal list of priorities. Getting the Xanadu system up, which is now programmed by other people has been my principal priority for the last 24 years. Now that's about to start uh maybe i'll have time to do a little spare program.

What is hacking all about ?

What is hacking all about ? It's all about whatever it's doing. It's everything you ever wanted a computer to be. It's making love, it's, it's, it's being aggressive, it's uh stalking into the unknown and seizing the unknown and kicking it and finding out that it's exactly what you didn't intend. And all of these things either in the, uh peculiar imagined world of the adventure game or in the investigation of an operating system or programming language, all of these are effectively the same. In fact adventure games are really uh allegorical system, allegorical presentations of hackers. Because people who like adventure games are computer types. I can't stand adventure games because you have to keep trying things out in this boring methodical way, but i'm not interested in that, some people are.

Well, okay… so, I can't read what I was gonna say well since it's behind. [mic test] Is this on ? You can read it.

We have been convinced, the world has been convinced by Xerox PARC and its diaspora, that the purpose of computers is to simulate paper, with all its decorations. Whereas the originator of electronic documents Douglas Engelbart was concerned about structure. Structure and forms of collaboration linkage and not just the trivial one way links of the web. And all of those disappeared with the sudden triumph of the Xerox PARC model called the modern GUI, I prefer to call it the PUI /pu-i/ or Park user interface, which, essentially is a fig leaf over the operating system which, like most fig leaves prevent access, and it's also an iron jockstrap because it prevents anything which is not allowed within that interface, so that the computer was dumbed down at that time and the Xerox PARC system was imitated by Apple and by Microsoft and henceforth hence after by Linux and so that's where everybody is right now.

So their model of documents is the simulation of paper. Rectangles organizing things into rectangular presentations. And an obsession with the prettiness of lettering, now I love fonts, I design my own font in college but, I believe that structure is far more important. Just as the mind is more important than the hairdresser. Now here, this is the only working demo I have, we paid the guy a lot of money for a cross-platform application and instead got a Windows-only demo… which we've been trying to get fixed for quite a while but here it is: this is the kind of document I'm talking about, we're talking about parallelism of documents. Documents do not exist in isolation yet we represent them in isolation. The doc format, the text format, the PDF are all by themselves ! Where are the connections ? We want to be able to see and follow the connections and this is how I mean : […] Here we have a flight of documents visibly connected, here are the connections when they're stretched like rubber bands, and here are the connections when we see them up close. So we have two pages, this is one only one possible visualization.

You see, along with the Xerox PARC propaganda of font representation, of the costume party of pretty typefaces, came the phrase WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get. Meaning literally: what you see is what you get… when you print it out ! Yes friends, this phrase WYSIWYG is propaganda for believing that you're creating that the purpose of documents is to create a paper simulation. Whereas we have deeper structure that can't be printed on paper, our slogan is WYSIWYNC: what you see is what you never could. So this is only one visualization, in this particular visualization we have to put two pages here, on the left we see something I wrote for this occasion, and on the right we see the origin of this quotation because every quotation should be visibly and immediately connectible to its source. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and that is from the King James Bible translation. Go down to the next quotation Adam and Lilith immediately bandik beyond and fight and that is from the Alphabet of Ben Sira. And as we step through, the successive connections — we have both links and transclusions here, I don't have time to explain — we see the successive connections, the pages successively connected leaping up to to be next to wherever they should be next to. Now that that is the essence of what I'm talking and…

[turns off beamer]

Alright, alright, so, parallel pages: that's what I'm here to talk about.

The representation The visible representation of parallelizable structure of every kind. Parallel pages for representing parallel content. For example history: what was happening in Germany ? What was happening in England ? What was happening in South America at the same time should be not in successive chapters, they should be parallel pages. Comments should be on the side, footnotes should be on the side. There is intrinsic parallelism of structure, there is intrinsic parallelism of content. And so these should be corresponding parts of documents. Outlines should be on the side. For programming, you should have the specs, next to the code, next to the bug list, and be able to traverse each of these steps. Because as I showed you, the parallel connection is also a bridge for the reader, or next author to move between the successive representation. As a workflow system, you see Xerox PARC gave us the pretty pages, but where do we put the content that hasn't gone on them yet ? And where do we put the stuff we might use and think might be out but might not be ? And where do we put the comments that may go somewhere but we're not sure ? They didn't leave us any place to put those except of course in the hierarchical directories in other paper representations. And they gave us that magnificent structure, the so-called clipboard. this is a metaphor you see, the clipboard where you do your CTRL + X and CTRL + V and CTRL … whatever, the clipboard is just like any physical clipboard, except

• you can't see it
• it only holds one object
• whatever you put on it destroys the previous object

Now in every other respect it resembles a physical clipboard, except there aren't any other respects. And the term clipboard is simply a propaganda term to make people accept this abominable mechanism, this tiny keyhole for the management of content which, destroys a million objects every day as people answer the phone and forget what they've got stored on it. The person responsible for this misnomer, is my friend Larry Tesler because unfortunately the people at Xerox PARC were idealists too, they just had a very shallow notion of human potentiality Doug Engelbart had a great notion of human potentiality he believed that people could expand to human understanding and ability to work could be expanded exponentially. Well I'm much more cynical, but I believe it could be a lot smarter than our current tools are making us. So we need

• Workflow with version management.
• We need parallel versions side by side to see the differences.
• We need workflow with a forkable undo chain.
• We need workflow for collaborative environments.
• We need to keep track of who wrote which part and when. and where does that show up ?

Well, Microsoft Word has these little thingies for doing that, that's enough for most lawyers right ? But giving us decent text tools, with access to the original content, access to the original sources of everything, access to the parallelisms, intrinsic in the documents we create, because I say the kinds of documents I am trying to create will be intrinsically parallel, I don't want to write any other kind of document ever and it makes me sick every day to have to use today's tools — believe me I've been on this long enough to be much angrier than I look.

So the simple structure is:

1. indirect documents meaning that a document is represented by list of pieces to bring in.
2. this is then overlaid with xana-links, I use that term only to make it absolutely clear we're not talking about web links as xana-link is a multi-faceted connector of arbitrary type and thus a no links are published separately so that they may be reused in other documents.

I'll just keep it simple: why do I keep at this ?

1. I still believe in the world I first imagined.
2. I believe, I will have the last laugh and hope to live long enough for it, when people finally come to understand in an integrated view the true nature of thought, the true nature of writing, the true nature of the writing process, the true nature of ongoing work which goes on, and on, and on, in unfinished and partial structures, the true nature of collaboration, the true nature of publication the true nature of posterity and thus the true and destined nature of documents thank you very much.

Today, is yesterday's tomorrow

Tomorow, today will be yesterday

So let's be careful what we borrow

That someday someone's gonna have to pay pum, pum

Someday, it'll all have been reconned

And others who don't care will have their way

So do not waste a precious second

Of now of life, of loving, of today pum, pum

Don't ask, for whom the bell is tolling

Just one of many tolls along the way

As long as you and I keep rolling

The bells of hell won't get to have their say pum, pum, pum… pum