Project Xanadu's Unreadable UI: A Vision That Never Worked
Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight
Attending a 50th-anniversary party for Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Gwern reflects on why Project Xanadu failed. Despite romanticizing early computing, he argues that the real issue wasn't hardware constraints or team incompetence but the core concept: side-by-side range transclusions are a solution in search of a problem. The UI, famously demonstrated with Genesis text zig-zagging across the screen, was 'completely unreadable.' Most text doesn't need such granular commentary, and even film rarely uses spatial juxtaposition. Xanadu's vision, while influential, remained impractical and unadopted.
The whole concept of side-by-side range transclusions is a solution in search of a problem.
- jonjacky
... Ted Nelson’s 1974 manifesto, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, extolling the vision of Project Xanadu hypertext.
Computer Lib/Dream Machines was not about project Xanadu, it merely mentions it on a few pages.
I recall Computer Lib/Dream Machines was the most influential thing Ted Nelson did, far more influential by than Xanadu. It was seen all over at the beginning of the personal computer era. Try to get a look at a copy if you can, it's fascinating.
This self-published book was very much of its time - it had the same oversize-on-newsprint format and DIY look as the Whole Earth Catalog, which was popular at the same time.
It was important because it pursuasively made the case that computing was about to become a medium for self-expresson - a "dream machine" - that was an unheard-of concept at the time. You can use a computer to produce graphics! To play games! How about that! He told about Sutherland's Sketchpad, Englebart's NLS, and the Arpanet at a time when these were completely invisible to almost everyone. Xanadu gets a few pages in the book but it is not at all a work of self-promotion - almost the whole book is about the work of others. It's a survey of the computing scene right before personal computers appeared.
This book was very timely and I think it provided a lot of inspiration for the personal computer movement. It made you want to try out computing! It has one page about microprocessors: "Here they come ... Microprocessors are what's happening" (the MITS Alt […]
- Rygian
> Xanadu wasn’t the victim of “Worse is Better”; it was just a solution in search of a problem.
Well, in the day to day use of computers across everyone I interact with, the following problems are very much present and still unsolved (savvy users can address them and transform them into chores; non-savvy users solve some of them by paying money to pospone the issues):
- I don't have any space left on my phone but my laptop has tons of space available. (Addressed by Xanadu principle 13.)
- How do I back up my stuff uniformly across my devices. (Addressed by Xanadu principle 14.)
- How do I share this file with a relative. (Addressed by Xanadu principles 2+4+10+11+12.)
- How do I not get trapped by vendors who want to lock me into their cloud solution. (Addressed by Xanadu principles 1, 2, 3, 15, 17.)
So the problems are very much there, and not improving. If anything, Xanadu was a prescient solution that addressed back them the problems we have today.
- WillAdams
The other books on hardware from this timeframe such as Tracy Kidder's _The Soul of a New Machine_ or Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ or Andy Hertzfeld's _Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made_ (available as: https://folklore.org/0-index.html) are quite striking and forthright in their discussion of hardware limitations and the ingenuity needed to get things done.
The book _CAD History_, available on-line at: https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/introduction has a bit on Xanadu from the Autodesk end of things.
Or, contrast the far more prosaic _Weaving the Web_ by Tim Berners-Lee and esp. take note of compromises such as URL changing from Universal Resource Locator to Uniform Resource Locator.
- gritzko
I always believed that side-by-side diff view is a transclusion interface.
Also, permalinks can work on top of git quite nicely https://replicated.live/blog/link
If git's pack index gets refactored slightly, it can do anything from trigram-indexed search to metadata indexing to hyperlinking both ways across repos. That is actually useful, I use it: https://replicated.live/blog/wiki
CRDT merges are a very incremental and useful upgrade for git https://replicated.live/blog/meta
Xanadu-like functionality is perfectly within reach.
We don't get what we want or what we need. Instead, we move erratically in very small, easy, local steps.
- erg0s4m
Meanwhile the Jewish world has a project that shows Bible passages and if you click on them, it does connect you to a world of translations, commentary, references in other books. https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1.1?lang=bi&with=Commentary%.... Comparing this to the famous Xanadu demo mentioned in the article, makes you think that Xanadu could have worked. (Except for the micropayments thing).