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Date: Sun, 07 Jul 1996 05:03:55 +0100
From: Tim Murphy <info@cinox.demon.co.uk>
Hi John,
Thanx for your replies to my message. Glad you and Frank liked it. I agree it could
be two orders of magnitude but was being a bit reserved in case you thought I was
mad!
I cannot find any references either to software PADS, but I don't think it is that
important to the neural nature of your project. PADS were more an idea of freeing up
and drastically cheapening software development by extending accessibility and making
it all leggo like and therefore cheap and transferable. It was a kind of template
system for software. I will continue to look for some references for a while but it
is a long time since I saw the article whilst gophering around before the web was
established.
I have sent you some stuff on Project Xanadu, which I have been following for years.
The important bit of these papers that has direct relevance to web neurons is in the
wired article towards the end where it says.
"I asked Miller if the Internet was accomplishing his dreams for hypertext. "What the
Web is doing is easy," Miller answered. He pointed out that the Web still lacks
nearly every one of the advanced features he and his colleagues were trying to
realise. There is no transclusion. There is no way to create links inside other
writers' documents. There is no way to follow all the references to a specific
document. Most importantly, the World Wide Web is no friend to logic. Rather, it
permits infinite redundancy and encourages maximum confusion. With Xanadu - that is,
with transclusion and freedom to link - users would have had a consistent, easily
navigable forum for universal debate."
And two paragraphs after the above where it says:
"Still, Miller conceded that the Web's existence means that it must be accepted as
the basis for a better form of hypertext. "We've got to use all of our technical
insights to migrate the Web to a higher plane," he said. Miller is pondering how to
allow readers to add links to other writers' Web pages without copying the original
documents."
I know what you mean about feeling overwhelmed by this kind of thing and I am sure
that it is a normal reaction to a very exiting and far reaching development that
shifts a paradigm (or two!). (Paradigm - term coined by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal
work from about 1962 "The structure of Scientific Revolutions").
In relation to your idea of using the Virtual Glastonbury website I will ask the
sponsor what he thinks about the idea. Although we may have to run that bit off a
different server or move the whole site. It is using a virtual server at the moment.
In relation to the Nerdathon, personally, I am on for it.
Where do you guys hang out BTW?
Regards,
Tim
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Tim's Emails
Re: Webnurones and project Xanadu.