I hadn't meant to be bleak: Martin's pricked my conscience! I'd intended to record the talk at Open Tech and reflect on the strange way it stays in the memory — the substance of the talk obscured by the sense of personal injury sustained. And injury has been sustained, there can be no doubt of that. (Whilst TN was talking, I found myself thinking of geniuses dis-regarded in their own time, and wondering …)
So, let me redress any necessary balance and also pay tribute to a new discovery, if:book:
For me, it's his humanist philosophy, more than the fuzzy mechanics of his proposed system, that is most inspiring. There's a generosity, an understanding of the interdependency of form and content, that is conspicuously absent in the prevailing tekkie culture. Perhaps the thinker closest of kin to Nelson was Jef Raskin, whose work on the humane interface is founded on many of the same convictions about usability and connectedness. I also find there's a kind of poetry in Nelson's dream of a literary hypertext economy, captured not only in his writings but in his frayed, manic illustrations … (ben vershbow)
Ted Nelson (introduced last week by Ben) is a lonely revolutionary marching a lonely march, and whenever he's in the news mockery is heard. Some of this is with good reason: nobody's willing to dismantle the Internet we have for his improved version of the Internet (which doesn't quite work yet). You don't have to poke around too long on his website to find things that reek of crackpottery. But the problems that Nelson has identified in the electronic world are real, even if the solutions he's proposing prove to be untenable. (dan visel)
if:book — well worth subscribing to their feed.
Martin, you're right: 'the vision remains'.
