Counter Currents: Are.na on Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines

Ted Nelson, whose ambitious Xanadu Project (though never completed) was a vision of disparate information linked by “hypertext” connections.

Although Nelson was polite, charming, and smooth, I was too slow for his fast talk. But I got an aha! from his marvelous notion of hypertext. He was certain that every document in the world should be a footnote to some other document, and computers could make the links between them visible and permanent. This was a new idea at the time. But that wa

In its chaotic, open, and intensely creative origins, the internet offered individual empowerment and access, cross-pollination, almost limitless connection among and between Citizens everywhere. As a many-to-many medium, it asks more of us than television or radio or the printing press, equipping us to be active in the world, capable of representi

There was a nascent movement of experimental websites mixing art, photography, video, and design into fascinating interactive narratives.

In its chaotic, open, and intensely creative origins, the internet offered individual empowerment and access, cross-pollination, almost limitless connection among and between Citizens everywhere. As a many-to-many medium, it asks more of us than television or radio or the printing press, equipping us to be active in the world, capable of representi

Computing pioneer Vannevar Bush outlined the web’s core idea—hyperlinked pages—way back in 1945, but the first person to try to build out the concept was a freethinker named Ted Nelson, who envisioned his own scheme in 1965. However, Nelson had little success connecting digital bits on a useful scale, and his efforts were known only to an isolated