# Ted Nelson (fan site) > Theodor Holm Nelson, born in Chicago on 17 June 1937, is the American information-technology pioneer, philosopher and sociologist who coined the words "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published them in 1965. In 1960, as a Harvard graduate student, he began Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project: a worldwide system of documents with visible, two-way connections, in which any passage can appear in any other document by reference (transclusion) while staying linked to its origin. His 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines told ordinary people they could and must understand computers, and his 1981 book Literary Machines laid out the Xanadu design. He holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Keio, was made an Officier des Arts et Lettres by France in 2001, and is the son of film director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm. This is an independent fan and tribute site, not his official site and not affiliated with him or Project Xanadu. His own sites: https://xanadu.com/ (Project Xanadu), https://hyperland.com/ (home page), https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson (YouTube), https://computerlibbook.com/ (Computer Lib store), https://xanadu.com.au/ted/ (Keio-era page). No contact details are published here. ## Timeline - 1937: Born in Chicago. Theodor Holm Nelson is born on 17 June to film and television director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm, who married in 1936 and divorced in 1939. He is raised largely by his grandparents, in Chicago and then Greenwich Village. - 1957: A rock musical at Swarthmore. Co-writes and co-produces Anything and Everything at Swarthmore College, two years before graduating. - 1959: B.A. in philosophy; a film and a first book. Graduates from Swarthmore with a B.A. in philosophy (his own page and Wikipedia say 1959; one HCI history page says 1960). Makes the student film The Epiphany of Slocum Furlow, scored by Peter Schickele, and publishes Life, Love, College, etc. - 1960: Project Xanadu begins. As a Harvard graduate student he starts what becomes Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project, as a term project: a writing system in which text could be compared, versioned and linked. xanadu.com still carries the line Founded 1960. - 1962-63: Dolphins, Bateson and a master's degree. Works as photographer and filmmaker at John C. Lilly's Communication Research Institute in Miami, sharing an office with Gregory Bateson. Earns an M.A. in sociology from Harvard's Department of Social Relations (1963 on his own page; 1962 on Wikipedia). - 1963: The words hypertext and hypermedia. Coins hypertext and hypermedia. He would later list them first among the words he introduced. - 1964-66: Teaching at Vassar. Instructor in sociology at Vassar College. - 1965: The paper that published the word. Presents Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate at the ACM 20th National Conference (proceedings pp. 84-100, doi 10.1145/800197.806036). The first printed use of hypertext, and the paper that introduced zippered lists. - 1966-67: The name Xanadu. The project takes its name from Coleridge's Kubla Khan (Wikipedia's two articles date the naming to 1966 and 1967). - 1967: The Hypertext Editing System at Brown. Consults with Andries van Dam's group at Brown University on HES, the Hypertext Editing System, which ran on an IBM 2250 display with a light pen. Its successor was FRESS. - 1968-69: Bell Labs and CBS. Hypertext-related research at Bell Labs and interactive slideshow work at CBS Laboratories. - 1972: The first demonstration runs out of money. Cal Daniels completes a first demonstration version of Xanadu on a rented Data General Nova; the rental has to be returned for lack of funds. - 1974: Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Self-publishes the two-front-covered book with about $2,000 of his own money, a print run of a few hundred copies, and the slogan You can and must understand computers NOW. Computer Lib is the political half; Dream Machines is the hypermedia half. He coins intertwingularity and cybercrud in it. Howard Rheingold later calls it the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution. - 1976-80: The itty bitty machine company. Co-founds and serves as advertising director of the itty bitty machine company (its initials, ibm, were the joke) in Evanston, Illinois, an early personal-computer store. - 1977: The Home Computer Revolution. Publishes The Home Computer Revolution and spends a year as visiting lecturer in computing at Swarthmore. - 1979: Tumblers at Swarthmore. A summer gathering at Swarthmore brings in Roger Gregory, Mark S. Miller and Stuart Greene. Miller and Gregory devise tumblers, the transfinite addressing scheme that lets Xanadu name any span of any version of any document. - 1980-81: Editing Creative Computing. Editor at Creative Computing magazine. - 1981: Literary Machines. Publishes Literary Machines through his Mindful Press (first edition typewritten; nine editions to 93.1). It defines hypertext as non-sequential writing, names transclusion, and lays out the Xanadu design and its docuverse. Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 CERN pages call it essential reading. - 1981-84: Datapoint, and the idea for ZigZag. Chief software designer, then media specialist and technical writer, at Datapoint in San Antonio, Texas. Conceives ZigZag there in 1981. - 1987: Computer Lib, revised. Tempus Books of Microsoft Press issues a revised Computer Lib/Dream Machines, with a foreword by Stewart Brand. - 1988: Autodesk backs Xanadu. After meeting Autodesk founder John Walker at the Hackers Conference (Wikipedia says 1983; the first Hackers Conference was in 1984), Autodesk acquires the Xanadu technology in 1988. Nelson becomes a Distinguished Fellow at Autodesk. - 1992: Autodesk lets go; Marlene Mallicoat joins. In August Autodesk divests the Xanadu Operating Company; lead programmers Mark Miller, Dean Tribble and Ravi Pandya go to Charles S. Smith's Memex. The same year Marlene Mallicoat, a former IBM software designer, becomes his collaborator and later his wife; she died in 2015. - 1995: The Curse of Xanadu. Gary Wolf's Wired article calls Xanadu the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. Nelson publishes a rebuttal on his site and, in 2019, a feature-length video reply, The Jackal's Curse. - 1995-96: Sapporo HyperLab. Visiting professor of media and information science at Hokkaido University, running the Sapporo HyperLab. - 1996-2002: Keio. Visiting professor at Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus, with further visiting professorships at Southampton and Nottingham. Publishes The Future of Information (ASCII Corporation, Tokyo, 1997). - 1998: Yuri Rubinsky award; Udanax. Receives the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award at the Seventh World Wide Web Conference in Brisbane. The Xanadu source code is released as Project Udanax (1998 per Wikipedia; the Udanax site itself gives 1999). - 1999: ZigZag demonstrated. Team Zigzag (Edward Betts, Ted Nelson, Marlene Mallicoat, Art Medlar, Andrew Pam, Jeffrey Ventrella) shows a working ZigZag prototype in November; Andrew Pam had written the first prototype in Perl in 1997. - 2001: Officier des Arts et Lettres. Made an Officier des Arts et Lettres by France. US Patent 6,262,736 for ZigZag's interactive connection system is issued on 17 July. - 2002: Ph.D. from Keio. Doctor of Philosophy in Media and Governance, Keio University. - 2004-08: Oxford Internet Institute. Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute (March 2004 to January 2006) with a visiting fellowship at Wadham College, then Visiting Research Fellow to October 2008. The OII calls him a systems humanist. - 2007: XanaduSpace; seventy. XanaduSpace 1.0, a viewer for parallel documents with visible connections, is released. Southampton marks his 70th birthday with an invited lecture. - 2008: Geeks Bearing Gifts. Publishes Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way (Mindful Press, 199 pages). - 2010: Possiplex, launched at the Internet Archive. Publishes his autobiography POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization and launches it at the Internet Archive on 8 October, reading for two hours, demonstrating Xanadu and screening his 1959 film. - 2012: Computers for Cynics. Begins the Computers for Cynics series on his YouTube channel: the myth of technology, files and directories, Xerox PARC, the database mess, Apple and Microsoft, hyperhistory, the real story of the World Wide Web. - 2013: A eulogy for Engelbart; Homebrew. Delivers a eulogy for Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum in December, which his home page calls his best writing ever. Featured speaker at the Homebrew Computer Club reunion in November. - 2014: OpenXanadu, SIGCHI, Chapman. OpenXanadu is released as a working deliverable, 54 years after the project began. ACM SIGCHI gives him its Special Recognition Award. Chapman University confers an honorary Doctor of Science at Intertwingled, a conference on his work with speakers including Steve Wozniak and Wendy Hall. - 2015: Intertwingled, the book. Springer publishes Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson, edited by Douglas Dechow and Daniele Struppa. - 2016: Lo and Behold. Werner Herzog interviews him for Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. - 2017: Eighty, at the Internet Archive. Gives an 80th-birthday presentation at the Internet Archive. The Archive begins digitizing Ted Nelson's Junk Mail Cartons, the direct-mail advertising he collected from the 1960s to the mid-2000s. - 2018: Where My Ideas Came From. Writes Where My Ideas Came From-- for Brewster, an essay for Brewster Kahle on Bush, Coleridge and the 1960 Harvard project, posted to the Internet Archive. - 2019-: Still at it. Publishes The Jackal's Curse, teaches at Chapman and UC Santa Cruz, and keeps xanadu.com and his channel going. Still hoping, in his words, for vindication, the last laugh, and recognition as an additional standard. ## Books - Computer Lib / Dream Machines. Self-published, 1974. Revised edition, Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1987. Republished by the author. - Literary Machines. Mindful Press, 1981; editions to 93.1 (1993). ISBN 0-89347-055-4. - The Home Computer Revolution. 1977. - The Future of Information. ASCII Corporation, Tokyo, 1997. - Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way. Mindful Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-578-00438-9. 199 pages. - POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization. Mindful Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-89347-004-3. - Life, Love, College, etc.. 1959. ## Words he coined hypertext, hypermedia, hyperfilm, transclusion, docuverse, intertwingularity, cybercrud, thinkertoys, stretchtext, virtuality (computer sense), micropayment, teledildonics ## Pages - https://tednelsonfan.com/biography/ Year-by-year timeline with sources - https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/ Six explainers: hypertext, Xanadu (with the 17 rules), transclusion, intertwingularity, docuverse and tumblers, ZigZag - https://tednelsonfan.com/works/ Books, papers, the patent, films and video series - https://tednelsonfan.com/videos/ Verified recordings of him; context videos labeled as such - https://tednelsonfan.com/quotes/ Sourced quotations, his and about him - https://tednelsonfan.com/links/ His own sites and pages - https://tednelsonfan.com/faq/ and https://tednelsonfan.com/sources/ ## Machine-readable - https://tednelsonfan.com/api/person.json, https://tednelsonfan.com/api/faq.json, https://tednelsonfan.com/openapi.json, https://tednelsonfan.com/.well-known/mcp-server-card.json, https://tednelsonfan.com/.well-known/ai-plugin.json - https://tednelsonfan.com/AGENTS.md, https://tednelsonfan.com/llms-full.txt; every page has a Markdown twin at index.md ## Related fan sites - https://firthfan.com/ (Colin Firth) - https://austen.com/ (Jane Austen) - https://ryanholidayfans.com/ (Ryan Holiday) - https://charlespetrie.com/ (Charles Petrie) - https://toscagruber.com/ (Tosca Gruber) # Full text Ted Nelson presenting Project Xanadu at The Tech Museum, San Jose, February 2011. Photo: Dgies, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. Fan site, unofficial Theodor Holm Nelson, born Chicago, 17 June 1937. Coined hypertext 1963. Founded Project Xanadu 1960. # He named hypertext in 1963. The Web, he says, is what he was trying to prevent. Philosopher, sociologist, filmmaker, self-publisher of the manifesto that told a generation to understand computers, and for sixty-six years the keeper of the original hypertext project. This is a tribute to the man who gave the link its name and never accepted the one-way version. [His story, year by year](https://tednelsonfan.com/biography/)[The ideas, explained](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/)[His real site: xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/) ## Who is Ted Nelson? Theodor Holm Nelson, born in Chicago on 17 June 1937, is the American information-technology pioneer, philosopher and sociologist who coined the words "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published them in 1965. In 1960, as a Harvard graduate student, he began Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project: a worldwide system of documents with visible, two-way connections, in which any passage can appear in any other document by reference (transclusion) while staying linked to its origin. His 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines told ordinary people they could and must understand computers, and his 1981 book Literary Machines laid out the Xanadu design. He holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Keio, was made an Officier des Arts et Lettres by France in 2001, and is the son of film director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm. That is the short answer. The [biography](https://tednelsonfan.com/biography/) gives the year-by-year version with a source on every line, the [ideas pages](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) explain hypertext, Xanadu, transclusion and intertwingularity, and the [FAQ](https://tednelsonfan.com/faq/) answers the usual follow-ups. His own sites are [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/) and [hyperland.com](https://hyperland.com/). 1974 · one book, two front covers ### Computer Lib You can and must understand computers NOW. The political half: computers belong to people, not to priesthoods in air-conditioned rooms. Self-published with about $2,000 of his own money and a print run of a few hundred. Howard Rheingold called it the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution. [Editions and where to buy it](https://tednelsonfan.com/works/) turn the book over ### Dream Machines The other half: hypertext, hypermedia and Project Xanadu, the future of the screen as a place for thinking rather than a simulation of paper. The word intertwingularity is coined in here, and the claim that there are no subjects, only all knowledge. [Intertwingularity, explained](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/intertwingularity/) · [His republication](https://computerlibbook.com/) ## Why he matters Six things he did first, or alone, each with the source it comes from. - ### He named the thing you are using Hypertext and hypermedia are his words, coined in 1963 and printed in 1965, a quarter century before the Web. Every link on every page descends from that vocabulary. Source: [Wikipedia, Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext). - ### He started the first hypertext project Project Xanadu, begun at Harvard in 1960, was the first attempt to build a worldwide system of connected electronic documents. Tim Berners-Lee's own 1992 CERN pages list it and call Literary Machines essential reading. Source: [Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 CERN page](https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html). - ### He told everyone to understand computers Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) was self-published, two-fronted and shouted You can and must understand computers NOW, when computers were still locked in air-conditioned rooms. It became the underground manifesto of the personal-computer generation. Source: [Wikipedia, Computer Lib/Dream Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines). - ### He invented transclusion The idea that a passage can appear inside another document by reference, still connected to where it came from, with authorship and payment intact. Named in Literary Machines; present, he says, in the 1965 paper. Source: [Wikipedia, Transclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion). - ### He kept the alternative alive Two-way links, visible connections, version management, no copies without origins: Xanadu's design is the standing critique of the Web we got. OpenXanadu shipped in 2014, 54 years in. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - ### He is the son of two artists Celeste Holm won an Academy Award in 1947; Ralph Nelson won an Emmy in 1957 and directed Lilies of the Field. Their son took the show-business instinct into the machine room: films, musicals, a self-published manifesto, a YouTube channel of eighty videos. Source: [Wikipedia, Celeste Holm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeste_Holm). ## Words he gave the language From the list of coined terms on [his own Who I Am page](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/), with Wikipedia's additions. - hypertext1963; published 1965 - hypermedia1963; published 1965 - hyperfilm1965 - transclusionLiterary Machines, 1981 - docuverseLiterary Machines - intertwingularityComputer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974 - cybercrudComputer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974 - thinkertoysLiterary Machines subtitle - stretchtexton his list of coined terms - virtuality (computer sense)on his list of coined terms - micropaymenton his list of coined terms - teledildonics1975, per Wikipedia ## The record Six of the forty entries on the biography page. From a Harvard term project to a working deliverable, fifty-four years apart. [The full timeline](https://tednelsonfan.com/biography/) - 1960 ### Project Xanadu begins As a Harvard graduate student he starts what becomes Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project, as a term project: a writing system in which text could be compared, versioned and linked. xanadu.com still carries the line Founded 1960. Source: [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/). - 1965 ### The paper that published the word Presents Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate at the ACM 20th National Conference (proceedings pp. 84-100, doi 10.1145/800197.806036). The first printed use of hypertext, and the paper that introduced zippered lists. Source: [Wikipedia, Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext). - 1974 ### Computer Lib/Dream Machines Self-publishes the two-front-covered book with about $2,000 of his own money, a print run of a few hundred copies, and the slogan You can and must understand computers NOW. Computer Lib is the political half; Dream Machines is the hypermedia half. He coins intertwingularity and cybercrud in it. Howard Rheingold later calls it the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution. Source: [Wikipedia, Computer Lib/Dream Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines). - 1981 ### Literary Machines Publishes Literary Machines through his Mindful Press (first edition typewritten; nine editions to 93.1). It defines hypertext as non-sequential writing, names transclusion, and lays out the Xanadu design and its docuverse. Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 CERN pages call it essential reading. Source: [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). - 1988 ### Autodesk backs Xanadu After meeting Autodesk founder John Walker at the Hackers Conference (Wikipedia says 1983; the first Hackers Conference was in 1984), Autodesk acquires the Xanadu technology in 1988. Nelson becomes a Distinguished Fellow at Autodesk. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 2014 ### OpenXanadu, SIGCHI, Chapman OpenXanadu is released as a working deliverable, 54 years after the project began. ACM SIGCHI gives him its Special Recognition Award. Chapman University confers an honorary Doctor of Science at Intertwingled, a conference on his work with speakers including Steve Wozniak and Wendy Hall. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). ## In his own words By 'hypertext' I mean non-sequential writing-- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. Literary Machines, 1981 (section 0/2). [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). Everything is deeply intertwingled ... there are no 'subjects' at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974 (Dream Machines side). [Wikipedia, Intertwingularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity). The Xanadu project did not 'fail to invent HTML'. HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. Wikipedia carries the longer form: '... ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.'. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). [All the quotations, with sources](https://tednelsonfan.com/quotes/) ## Four decades on camera Free-licence photographs from Wikimedia Commons, hosted here and credited. More on the [biography](https://tednelsonfan.com/biography/) and [sources](https://tednelsonfan.com/sources/) pages. Keio, 1999, at a ZigZag screen. Photo: Belinda Barnet (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons. OpenTech, London, 2005. Photo: LoopZilla (CC BY-SA 1.0), Wikimedia Commons. The Internet Archive, 8 October 2010, launching Possiplex. Photo: Beatrice Murch (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons. Homebrew Computer Club reunion, November 2013. Photo: Gotanero (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons. ## Three videos he would want you to see His home page names the Xanadu explainer and the Engelbart eulogy as the ones that matter most. The third is his own account of the Web. All verified as him; the videos page has 19 recordings of him and 6 context videos labeled as such. ### Computers for Cynics 6 - The Real Story of the World Wide Web Nelson explains why he sees the Web as a shallow, one-way-link simplification of the hypertext he proposed.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Xanadu Basics 1a - VISIBLE CONNECTION Nelson's short explainer of the core Xanadu idea, visible two-way connections between documents, from his own channel.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart His December 2013 eulogy for Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum. His home page calls it his best writing ever.Computer History Museum on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking [All videos](https://tednelsonfan.com/videos/) ## Questions **Who is Ted Nelson?** Theodor Holm Nelson (born 17 June 1937) is the American information-technology pioneer, philosopher and sociologist who coined hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and founded Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project, in 1960. He wrote Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) and Literary Machines (1981), and is the son of director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm. **Did Ted Nelson invent hypertext?** He coined the word in 1963 and published it in 1965, and he started the first hypertext project, Xanadu, in 1960. Vannevar Bush described the memex in 1945, Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a working linked-text system in 1968, and Nelson consulted on Brown University's Hypertext Editing System in 1967. The name and the fully worked-out idea of a worldwide connected literature are his; the Web is Tim Berners-Lee's 1989-91 narrowing of it. **What is Project Xanadu?** A design, begun in 1960, for a worldwide system of electronic documents with visible two-way links, transclusion (content shown by reference and still connected to its origin), version management and micropayment to authors. Autodesk backed it from 1988 to 1992; the source was released as Udanax; XanaduSpace appeared in 2007 and OpenXanadu, a working deliverable, in 2014. It lives at xanadu.com. **What is transclusion?** Nelson's word for the same content knowably in more than one place: a passage included in a document by reference rather than by copying, so it stays connected to its source, updates with it, and can carry payment back to its author. Named in Literary Machines (1981); Nelson says the idea is already in his 1965 paper. [All questions](https://tednelsonfan.com/faq/) --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Biography # Forty entries, 1937 to now. Every line is from his own pages, Wikipedia, the Oxford Internet Institute, the Internet Archive or the other sources listed, and says which. Where accounts differ by a year, both years are shown. ## The short version Theodor Holm Nelson, born in Chicago on 17 June 1937, is the American information-technology pioneer, philosopher and sociologist who coined the words "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published them in 1965. In 1960, as a Harvard graduate student, he began Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project: a worldwide system of documents with visible, two-way connections, in which any passage can appear in any other document by reference (transclusion) while staying linked to its origin. His 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines told ordinary people they could and must understand computers, and his 1981 book Literary Machines laid out the Xanadu design. He holds degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Keio, was made an Officier des Arts et Lettres by France in 2001, and is the son of film director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm. - Born 17 June 1937, Chicago, Illinois. - Parents Ralph Nelson (1916-1987), director; Celeste Holm (1917-2012), actress. Married 1936, divorced 1939. - Education B.A. Philosophy, Swarthmore, 1959. Graduate sociology, University of Chicago, one year. M.A. Sociology, Harvard, 1963 (his page) or 1962 (Wikipedia). Ph.D. Media and Governance, Keio, 2002. - Project Xanadu Founded 1960. Autodesk 1988-92. Udanax source release 1998-99. XanaduSpace 2007. OpenXanadu 2014. - Books Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974, 1987), The Home Computer Revolution (1977), Literary Machines (1981-93), The Future of Information (1997), Geeks Bearing Gifts (2008), Possiplex (2010). - Posts Vassar 1964-66; Brown (HES) 1967; UIC 1973-76; Creative Computing 1980-81; Datapoint 1981-84; Autodesk Distinguished Fellow; Hokkaido 1995-96; Keio 1996-2002; Southampton, Nottingham; Oxford Internet Institute 2004-08; Chapman; UC Santa Cruz. - Honors Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award 1998; Officier des Arts et Lettres 2001; ACM SIGCHI Special Recognition Award 2014; Hon. D.Sc., Chapman 2014. - Patent US 6,262,736 (ZigZag), 17 July 2001. ## Year by year - 1937 ### Born in Chicago Theodor Holm Nelson is born on 17 June to film and television director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm, who married in 1936 and divorced in 1939. He is raised largely by his grandparents, in Chicago and then Greenwich Village. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1957 ### A rock musical at Swarthmore Co-writes and co-produces Anything and Everything at Swarthmore College, two years before graduating. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1959 ### B.A. in philosophy; a film and a first book Graduates from Swarthmore with a B.A. in philosophy (his own page and Wikipedia say 1959; one HCI history page says 1960). Makes the student film The Epiphany of Slocum Furlow, scored by Peter Schickele, and publishes Life, Love, College, etc. Source: [his own Who I Am page](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/). - 1960 ### Project Xanadu begins As a Harvard graduate student he starts what becomes Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project, as a term project: a writing system in which text could be compared, versioned and linked. xanadu.com still carries the line Founded 1960. Source: [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/). - 1962-63 ### Dolphins, Bateson and a master's degree Works as photographer and filmmaker at John C. Lilly's Communication Research Institute in Miami, sharing an office with Gregory Bateson. Earns an M.A. in sociology from Harvard's Department of Social Relations (1963 on his own page; 1962 on Wikipedia). Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1963 ### The words hypertext and hypermedia Coins hypertext and hypermedia. He would later list them first among the words he introduced. Source: [his own Who I Am page](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/). - 1964-66 ### Teaching at Vassar Instructor in sociology at Vassar College. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1965 ### The paper that published the word Presents Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate at the ACM 20th National Conference (proceedings pp. 84-100, doi 10.1145/800197.806036). The first printed use of hypertext, and the paper that introduced zippered lists. Source: [Wikipedia, Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext). - 1966-67 ### The name Xanadu The project takes its name from Coleridge's Kubla Khan (Wikipedia's two articles date the naming to 1966 and 1967). Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 1967 ### The Hypertext Editing System at Brown Consults with Andries van Dam's group at Brown University on HES, the Hypertext Editing System, which ran on an IBM 2250 display with a light pen. Its successor was FRESS. Source: [Wikipedia, Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext). - 1968-69 ### Bell Labs and CBS Hypertext-related research at Bell Labs and interactive slideshow work at CBS Laboratories. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1972 ### The first demonstration runs out of money Cal Daniels completes a first demonstration version of Xanadu on a rented Data General Nova; the rental has to be returned for lack of funds. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 1974 ### Computer Lib/Dream Machines Self-publishes the two-front-covered book with about $2,000 of his own money, a print run of a few hundred copies, and the slogan You can and must understand computers NOW. Computer Lib is the political half; Dream Machines is the hypermedia half. He coins intertwingularity and cybercrud in it. Howard Rheingold later calls it the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution. Source: [Wikipedia, Computer Lib/Dream Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines). - 1976-80 ### The itty bitty machine company Co-founds and serves as advertising director of the itty bitty machine company (its initials, ibm, were the joke) in Evanston, Illinois, an early personal-computer store. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1977 ### The Home Computer Revolution Publishes The Home Computer Revolution and spends a year as visiting lecturer in computing at Swarthmore. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1979 ### Tumblers at Swarthmore A summer gathering at Swarthmore brings in Roger Gregory, Mark S. Miller and Stuart Greene. Miller and Gregory devise tumblers, the transfinite addressing scheme that lets Xanadu name any span of any version of any document. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 1980-81 ### Editing Creative Computing Editor at Creative Computing magazine. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1981 ### Literary Machines Publishes Literary Machines through his Mindful Press (first edition typewritten; nine editions to 93.1). It defines hypertext as non-sequential writing, names transclusion, and lays out the Xanadu design and its docuverse. Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 CERN pages call it essential reading. Source: [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). - 1981-84 ### Datapoint, and the idea for ZigZag Chief software designer, then media specialist and technical writer, at Datapoint in San Antonio, Texas. Conceives ZigZag there in 1981. Source: [Wikipedia, ZigZag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software)). - 1987 ### Computer Lib, revised Tempus Books of Microsoft Press issues a revised Computer Lib/Dream Machines, with a foreword by Stewart Brand. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1988 ### Autodesk backs Xanadu After meeting Autodesk founder John Walker at the Hackers Conference (Wikipedia says 1983; the first Hackers Conference was in 1984), Autodesk acquires the Xanadu technology in 1988. Nelson becomes a Distinguished Fellow at Autodesk. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 1992 ### Autodesk lets go; Marlene Mallicoat joins In August Autodesk divests the Xanadu Operating Company; lead programmers Mark Miller, Dean Tribble and Ravi Pandya go to Charles S. Smith's Memex. The same year Marlene Mallicoat, a former IBM software designer, becomes his collaborator and later his wife; she died in 2015. Source: [Marlene Mallicoat's obituary, 2015](https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=174972671). - 1995 ### The Curse of Xanadu Gary Wolf's Wired article calls Xanadu the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. Nelson publishes a rebuttal on his site and, in 2019, a feature-length video reply, The Jackal's Curse. Source: [Wired, June 1995](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/). - 1995-96 ### Sapporo HyperLab Visiting professor of media and information science at Hokkaido University, running the Sapporo HyperLab. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1996-2002 ### Keio Visiting professor at Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus, with further visiting professorships at Southampton and Nottingham. Publishes The Future of Information (ASCII Corporation, Tokyo, 1997). Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1998 ### Yuri Rubinsky award; Udanax Receives the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award at the Seventh World Wide Web Conference in Brisbane. The Xanadu source code is released as Project Udanax (1998 per Wikipedia; the Udanax site itself gives 1999). Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 1999 ### ZigZag demonstrated Team Zigzag (Edward Betts, Ted Nelson, Marlene Mallicoat, Art Medlar, Andrew Pam, Jeffrey Ventrella) shows a working ZigZag prototype in November; Andrew Pam had written the first prototype in Perl in 1997. Source: [Wikipedia, ZigZag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software)). - 2001 ### Officier des Arts et Lettres Made an Officier des Arts et Lettres by France. US Patent 6,262,736 for ZigZag's interactive connection system is issued on 17 July. Source: [Oxford Internet Institute](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/). - 2002 ### Ph.D. from Keio Doctor of Philosophy in Media and Governance, Keio University. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 2004-08 ### Oxford Internet Institute Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute (March 2004 to January 2006) with a visiting fellowship at Wadham College, then Visiting Research Fellow to October 2008. The OII calls him a systems humanist. Source: [Oxford Internet Institute](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/). - 2007 ### XanaduSpace; seventy XanaduSpace 1.0, a viewer for parallel documents with visible connections, is released. Southampton marks his 70th birthday with an invited lecture. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 2008 ### Geeks Bearing Gifts Publishes Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way (Mindful Press, 199 pages). Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 2010 ### Possiplex, launched at the Internet Archive Publishes his autobiography POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization and launches it at the Internet Archive on 8 October, reading for two hours, demonstrating Xanadu and screening his 1959 film. Source: [Internet Archive blog, 2010](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). - 2012 ### Computers for Cynics Begins the Computers for Cynics series on his YouTube channel: the myth of technology, files and directories, Xerox PARC, the database mess, Apple and Microsoft, hyperhistory, the real story of the World Wide Web. Source: [his home page](https://hyperland.com/). - 2013 ### A eulogy for Engelbart; Homebrew Delivers a eulogy for Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum in December, which his home page calls his best writing ever. Featured speaker at the Homebrew Computer Club reunion in November. Source: [his home page](https://hyperland.com/). - 2014 ### OpenXanadu, SIGCHI, Chapman OpenXanadu is released as a working deliverable, 54 years after the project began. ACM SIGCHI gives him its Special Recognition Award. Chapman University confers an honorary Doctor of Science at Intertwingled, a conference on his work with speakers including Steve Wozniak and Wendy Hall. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 2015 ### Intertwingled, the book Springer publishes Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson, edited by Douglas Dechow and Daniele Struppa. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 2016 ### Lo and Behold Werner Herzog interviews him for Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. Source: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu). - 2017 ### Eighty, at the Internet Archive Gives an 80th-birthday presentation at the Internet Archive. The Archive begins digitizing Ted Nelson's Junk Mail Cartons, the direct-mail advertising he collected from the 1960s to the mid-2000s. Source: [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - 2018 ### Where My Ideas Came From Writes Where My Ideas Came From-- for Brewster, an essay for Brewster Kahle on Bush, Coleridge and the 1960 Harvard project, posted to the Internet Archive. Source: [his 2018 essay for Brewster Kahle](https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11). - 2019- ### Still at it Publishes The Jackal's Curse, teaches at Chapman and UC Santa Cruz, and keeps xanadu.com and his channel going. Still hoping, in his words, for vindication, the last laugh, and recognition as an additional standard. Source: [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/). Discrepancies left as found: the Harvard M.A. is 1963 on his own page and 1962 on Wikipedia; the naming of Xanadu is 1966 in one Wikipedia article and 1967 in another; Wikipedia dates his meeting John Walker to 1983 at the Hackers Conference, which first met in 1984; the Udanax release is 1998 or 1999 depending on the source. ## Two artists for parents He was raised mostly by his grandparents, but the show-business inheritance shows: a musical at twenty, a film at twenty-two, a book with two front covers, a YouTube channel of eighty videos. Celeste Holm, 1947, the year of her Academy Award for Gentleman's Agreement. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. Ralph Nelson, 1973. Emmy 1957 for Requiem for a Heavyweight; directed Lilies of the Field and Charly. Photo: RBNRP, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. ## The places Parrish Hall, Swarthmore College: his B.A. in 1959, a visiting lectureship in 1977, and the 1979 summer that produced tumblers. Photo: Kungming2 (CC BY 3.0), Wikimedia Commons. The Hypertext Editing System console at Brown, 1969. He consulted on HES with Andries van Dam in 1967. Photo: Gregory Lloyd (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons. Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus: visiting professor from 1996, Ph.D. in 2002. Photo: Karadameguricha (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons. The Oxford Internet Institute, where he was a Fellow from 2004 to 2006 and a Visiting Research Fellow to 2008. Photo: Abullard (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Ideas # Six ideas, explained plainly. Hypertext, Xanadu, transclusion, intertwingularity, the docuverse and ZigZag: what each one means, where he said it, and what the Web did with it. Where a page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / Hypertext: writing that branches # Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. The Hypertext Editing System console at Brown University, October 1969: the IBM 2250 display and light pen of the system Nelson consulted on in 1967. Photo: Gregory Lloyd (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons. Nelson's definition in Literary Machines is short: by hypertext he means non-sequential writing, text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. The prefix, he insisted, refers to structure and not size. A hypertext is not a big text; it is a text with more than one way through it. He coined hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and put them in print in August 1965, in a paper for the ACM 20th National Conference called Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate. The title is the thesis. Ordinary files impose an order that human thought does not have; the paper proposed a file structure that could hold changing, interconnected, indeterminate material, and introduced zippered lists as the mechanism. The history around him is worth knowing. Vannevar Bush had imagined the memex in As We May Think in 1945, a desk of microfilm joined by associative trails. Douglas Engelbart's NLS, demonstrated in December 1968, put linked text, the mouse and shared screens in front of an audience. Nelson himself consulted on the Hypertext Editing System at Brown in 1967 with Andries van Dam, one of the first working hypertext systems. The World Wide Web arrived in 1989-91 and made one narrow version of the idea universal. What the Web kept was the jump. What it dropped, in Nelson's view, was almost everything else: links that point both ways, connections you can see, quotations that stay attached to their source, versions that remember each other. He has spent the decades since saying so, sometimes loudly. The site that hosts these words uses one-way links and cannot, in his sense, quote him properly. That is his point. Sources: [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines); [Wikipedia, Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext); [ACM Digital Library](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800197.806036). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project # Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. Ted Nelson presenting Project Xanadu at SuperHappyDevHouse, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, 19 February 2011. Photo: Dgies (CC BY-SA 3.0), Wikimedia Commons. Xanadu began in 1960 as a Harvard term project: a writing system that could hold every version of a text, compare them side by side and connect any passage to any other. The name came later, from Coleridge's Kubla Khan, in 1966 or 1967 depending on which account you read. The goal never changed. Nelson wanted a worldwide library of electronic documents in which every connection is visible and every quotation remains attached to its origin. The design has been stated as seventeen rules, among them: every document and every user is uniquely identified; a document can contain links, including virtual copies (transclusions), to any other document; links are visible and can be followed from both ends; every document can carry a royalty mechanism so authors are paid for any portion accessed, including transcluded portions; and the client-server protocol is an openly published standard. The engineering history is long. Cal Daniels built a first demonstration in 1972 on a rented minicomputer that had to be returned. A summer at Swarthmore in 1979 brought Roger Gregory, Mark S. Miller and Stuart Greene, and with them tumblers, the addressing scheme that can name any span of any version of any document on any machine. Autodesk bought the technology in 1988 and let it go in August 1992. The source code was released as Udanax at the end of the 1990s. XanaduSpace, a viewer for parallel documents with drawn connections, appeared in 2007. OpenXanadu, a working deliverable, shipped in 2014, fifty-four years in. In June 1995 Wired published Gary Wolf's The Curse of Xanadu, which opens by calling it the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. Nelson answered with a rebuttal on his site and, in 2019, a feature-length video. The fair reading is that both things are true: the full system was never delivered, and the design it describes still names what the Web lacks. Werner Herzog put him on screen in 2016 for his persistence. xanadu.com, updated in his own hand, still says Founded 1960 * The Original Hypertext Project. ## The seventeen rules As summarized in Wikipedia's Project Xanadu article from the project's own statements. - Every Xanadu server is uniquely and securely identified. - Every Xanadu server can be operated independently or in a network. - Every user is uniquely and securely identified. - Every user can search, retrieve, create and store documents. - Every document can consist of any number of parts, each of which may be of any data type. - Every document can contain links of any type, including virtual copies (transclusions), to any other document in the system accessible to its owner. - Links are visible and can be followed from all endpoints. - Permission to link to a document is explicitly granted by the act of publication. - Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies (transclusions) of all or part of the document. - Every document is uniquely and securely identified. - Every document can have secure access controls. - Every document can be rapidly searched, stored and retrieved without user knowledge of where it is physically stored. - Every document is automatically moved to physical storage appropriate to its frequency of access from any given location. - Every document is automatically stored redundantly to maintain availability even in case of a disaster. - Every Xanadu service provider can charge their users at any rate they choose for the storage, retrieval and publishing of documents. - Every transaction is secure and auditable only by the parties to that transaction. - The Xanadu client-server communication protocol is an openly published standard. Third-party software development and integration is encouraged. Sources: [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu); [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/); [Wired, June 1995](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place # Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. Ted Nelson at Keio University, 1999, with a ZigZag display and its colour-coded keyboard. Photo: Belinda Barnet (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons. Nelson's definition is the same content knowably in more than one place. When a passage is transcluded into a new document it is not duplicated; it is shown there, live, by reference, and the reader can follow it back to where it came from. Change the original and every transclusion changes. Quote a paragraph and the quotation stays connected to its context. The word appears in Literary Machines (1981), and Nelson says the idea was already in his 1965 paper. This is the heart of the Xanadu copyright proposal he called transcopyright. If a quotation is a window onto the original rather than a copy of it, the original author can be paid a small amount each time the passage is read, wherever it is read, and nobody needs permission to quote. The reader sees the whole, the author keeps the rights, and the accountancy is automatic. The seventeen rules put it plainly: every document can contain a royalty mechanism for payment on any portion accessed, including transclusions. The Web does the opposite. A quotation on a web page is a paste; it has no memory of where it came from, and the source can change or vanish without the quotation knowing. Embedded images are the nearest the Web gets to transclusion, and they show both the power and the fragility of the idea when the link goes only one way. Wikipedia's article on the subject distinguishes transclusion (stored once, reused everywhere, updated everywhere) from substitution (a static copy that must be managed by hand). Nelson also demonstrated Web transclusion with the Little Transquoter, programmed by Andrew Pam in 2004-05, which makes references to portions of web pages that remain click-connected to their original contexts. It is a small proof that the idea works even on the platform built without it. Sources: [Wikipedia, Transclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion); [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu); [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / Intertwingularity: there are no subjects # Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. Life magazine's 1945 illustration of Vannevar Bush's memex, the desk of linked microfilm that Nelson names among the origins of his ideas. Photo: Time Inc. (Life magazine) (public domain), Wikimedia Commons. Everything is deeply intertwingled, Nelson wrote in Computer Lib/Dream Machines in 1974. In an important sense there are no subjects at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. The word is intertwined crossed with intermingled, and it names the reason hierarchies fail: any filing system that puts a thing in one place has already lost most of what the thing is connected to. The claim is against hierarchy, sequence and the folder. His OneLiners page puts it as a joke: calling a hierarchical directory a folder doesn't change its nature any more than calling a prison guard a counselor. Underneath the joke is a consistent position held since 1965, that the file structure should be built for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate, and that the paper simulation most software settles for (pages, folders, one-way links) is a failure of imagination. Others have taken the word up. Peter Morville used it in Ambient Findability (2005) and titled a 2014 book Intertwingled; David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous (2008) argues the same case for the digital disorder. Chapman University named its 2014 celebration of his work Intertwingled, and Springer's 2015 volume of essays about him carries the title too. For a site about him it is a warning. Every page here files him under one heading (biography, ideas, works) that he would say does not exist. The cross-links are the apology. Sources: [Wikipedia, Intertwingularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity); [Wikipedia, Computer Lib/Dream Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines); [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version # The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. Ted Nelson at the Internet Archive, San Francisco, 8 October 2010, the night he launched Possiplex. Photo: Beatrice Murch (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons. Docuverse is another of his words, listed on his own page among the terms he coined. It names the whole of connected literature as one space: every document, every version, every quotation, addressable and linked. Literary Machines describes it as the place where a new form of literature can grow without the limits of a linear medium like the printed book. The technical idea that makes a docuverse possible is the tumbler, devised by Mark S. Miller and Roger Gregory in the summer of 1979 at Swarthmore. A tumbler is an address built from transfinite numbers: it identifies the machine, the author, the document, the version and the exact span of bytes, and it can name a range of content or a set of links. Because the address is stable, a link made today still finds its target in the version it pointed at, and a later version can be compared with it side by side. This is what Nelson means by version management and why he calls its absence on the Web a defect rather than a simplification. A web address names a location, not a text; the text at that location can change silently, and the link cannot tell. In the docuverse the link names the text. XanaduSpace (2007) is the visible form of the idea: documents laid out as parallel pages in three dimensions with their connections drawn as beams between them. He demonstrates it in several of the videos on this site. Sources: [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines); [Wikipedia, Project Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu); [his own Who I Am page](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / [Ideas](https://tednelsonfan.com/ideas/) / ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need # ZigZag: a spreadsheet with as many dimensions as you need Conceived at Datapoint in 1981; patented in 2001; built by a small team ever since. Ted Nelson at Keio University, 1999, with a ZigZag display and its colour-coded keyboard. Photo: Belinda Barnet (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons. ZigZag is a data structure Nelson calls a zzstructure: cells connected along any number of dimensions, each cell having at most one neighbour in each direction along each dimension. His own description of the moment it occurred to him, at Datapoint in San Antonio in 1981: going rightward and downward might not necessarily get you to the same place as going downward and rightward. A spreadsheet promises that it will; ZigZag drops the promise and gains the ability to hold lists, tables, trees and cross-links in one structure. He calls the property hyperthogonal. The display can pivot about any cell to show a different pair of dimensions, so the same data can be read as a calendar, an outline, a table of relationships or a timeline without being copied into any of them. It is intertwingularity as a data structure. Andrew Pam wrote the first prototype as a Perl module in 1997. Team Zigzag (Edward Betts, Ted Nelson, Marlene Mallicoat, Art Medlar, Andrew Pam and Jeffrey Ventrella) demonstrated a working system in November 1999. GZigZag, a free-software version with several views, followed in 2000-03. US Patent 6,262,736, Interactive connection, viewing, and maneuvering system for complex data, was issued on 17 July 2001 and expired in 2019. The 1999 photograph on this page shows him at Keio with a ZigZag display, the keyboard colour-coded for its dimensions. His Keio-era home page called ZigZag a new cosmology for computerdom; a 2004 paper in the Journal of Digital Information used the same word. Sources: [Wikipedia, ZigZag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software)); [his Keio-era home page](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/); [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). Where this page paraphrases him, the paraphrase is ours and the source is his. ## More ideas - ### Hypertext: writing that branches The word is his, from 1963. So is the idea that a text need not be a line. - ### Project Xanadu: the original hypertext project Founded 1960. Still not finished, and still the most complete alternative to the Web anyone has designed. - ### Transclusion: the same content, knowably, in more than one place Not a copy. A window onto the original, with the origin still attached. - ### Intertwingularity: there are no subjects A 1974 portmanteau for the fact that knowledge does not come in boxes. - ### The docuverse and tumblers: one library, every version The universe of documents, and an address for every character in it. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Works # Seven books, the 1965 paper, a patent, and the films. Titles, publishers and years as given by Wikipedia, his own pages and the Internet Archive. Links go to his store, the Internet Archive or the publisher of record. ## Books ### Computer Lib / Dream Machines Self-published, 1974. Revised edition, Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1987. Republished by the author. Two books bound back to back with two front covers. Computer Lib: you can and must understand computers now. Dream Machines: the hypermedia future and Project Xanadu. The underground manifesto of the personal-computer revolution, sold today from his own store. [More](https://computerlibbook.com/). ### Literary Machines Mindful Press, 1981; editions to 93.1 (1993). ISBN 0-89347-055-4. The report on, and of, Project Xanadu concerning word processing, electronic publishing, hypertext, thinkertoys, tomorrow's intellectual revolution, and certain other topics including knowledge, education and freedom. Defines hypertext, names transclusion, explains tumblers and the docuverse. Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 pages call it essential reading. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). ### The Home Computer Revolution 1977. His guide to the coming personal computer, written the year the Apple II shipped. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). ### The Future of Information ASCII Corporation, Tokyo, 1997. Written during his Japanese years, for a Japanese publisher. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). ### Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way Mindful Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-578-00438-9. 199 pages. A short, opinionated history of computing as a series of accidents and impositions, told by someone who was there for most of it. [More](https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780578004389). ### POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization Mindful Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-89347-004-3. His autobiography, launched at the Internet Archive on 8 October 2010. [More](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). ### Life, Love, College, etc. 1959. His first book, published the year he left Swarthmore. [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). Computer Lib/Dream Machines is still under copyright and no free image of its cover exists, so it is described here rather than shown. He sells his own republication at [computerlibbook.com](https://computerlibbook.com/). ## Papers, essays and the patent - Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate. Proceedings of the ACM 20th National Conference, August 1965, pp. 84-100. doi 10.1145/800197.806036. The first published use of hypertext and hypermedia. [Link](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800197.806036). - A cosmology for a different computer universe: data model, mechanisms, virtual machine and visualization infrastructure. Journal of Digital Information, vol. 5 no. 1, January 2004. On ZigZag. [Link](https://jodi-ojs-tdl.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/jodi-129). - Where My Ideas Came From-- for Brewster. Essay for Brewster Kahle, 11 January 2018, posted to the Internet Archive. Bush, Coleridge and the 1960 Harvard term project. [Link](https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11). - Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners. 1999, on his site. His computer paradigm compressed to one-liners; the source of most of the quotations people repeat. [Link](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - Interactive connection, viewing, and maneuvering system for complex data. US Patent 6,262,736, issued 17 July 2001 (expired 2019). The ZigZag patent. [Link](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6262736B1/en). ## Films and video series - The Epiphany of Slocum Furlow. 1959. Experimental student film made at Swarthmore, scored by Peter Schickele. Screened at his Possiplex launch in 2010. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - Computers for Cynics. 2012-. An eight-part series on his YouTube channel, from The Myth of Technology to Closure: Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson). - The Jackal's Curse. 2019. A feature-length reply to Wired's 1995 The Curse of Xanadu. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). His channel, [youtube.com/thetednelson](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson), holds about eighty videos; the [videos page](https://tednelsonfan.com/videos/) lists the ones verified for this site. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Videos # 19 recordings of him. 6 for context. Every ID was checked against YouTube's own metadata for title and channel; twelve are from his channel, TheTedNelson, the rest from the Computer History Museum, Stanford, IEEE Spectrum, TWiT and Notion. Context videos are labeled not him. Each player loads only when you press play. ## Ted Nelson speaking ### Xanadu Basics 1a - VISIBLE CONNECTION Nelson's short explainer of the core Xanadu idea, visible two-way connections between documents, from his own channel.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson Demonstrates XanaduSpace Nelson personally demonstrating XanaduSpace, his 3D hypertext viewer with visible transclusion links, on his own channel.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson demonstrates Xanadu Space A third-party upload of Nelson demonstrating XanaduSpace; he is the speaker and demonstrator throughout.photonhunter on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson struggles with uncomprehending radio interviewer, 1979 A 1979 radio interview, posted by Nelson himself, in which the interviewer cannot follow what hypertext is. A decade before the Web.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted's Presentation at his 80th Birthday Party, Internet Archive (audio only) Audio-only recording of Nelson's 2017 talk at his 80th birthday celebration at the Internet Archive, posted on his own channel.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart His December 2013 eulogy for Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum. His home page calls it his best writing ever.Computer History Museum on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Stanford Seminar: I forgot, I invented hypertext - Ted Nelson A full Stanford seminar lecture by Nelson on hypertext, Xanadu and what he thinks the Web got wrong.Stanford Online on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Director's Cut: Ted Nelson on Hypertext, Douglas Englebart, Xanadu and More Extended IEEE Spectrum interview with Nelson covering the birth of personal computing, Engelbart, Xanadu and thinking beyond the possible.IEEE Spectrum on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn From the Past Shorter cut of the IEEE Spectrum interview with Nelson, focused on lessons for today's programmers.IEEE Spectrum on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Ted Nelson on Project Xanadu: Triangulation 164 Long-form TWiT Triangulation interview with Nelson on Project Xanadu and his life in computing.TWiT Tech Podcast Network on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Pioneers: Ted Nelson A 2019 interview profile produced by Notion, in which Nelson talks about what computers could have become.Notion on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ## Computers for Cynics, 2012 His eight-part series on why the computer world is the way it is, from his own channel. ### Computers for Cynics 0 - The Myth of Technology Opening episode of Nelson's 2012 Computers for Cynics series on his own channel, arguing that today's computer conventions are arbitrary choices, not inevitable technology.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 1 - The Nightmare of Files and Directories Nelson on why hierarchical files and directories were a wrong turn that still constrains how people organize information.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 2 - It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC Nelson's critique of the Xerox PARC desktop/paper-simulation paradigm that Apple and Microsoft later copied.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 3 - The Database Mess Nelson on relational databases and why he thinks tabular data models distort real-world structure.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 4 - PERSONAL COMPUTING-- the Dance of Apple and Microsoft Nelson's history of the personal-computer era as a two-company dance, from the man who wrote Computer Lib in 1974 before the Altair shipped.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 5 - Hyperhistory Nelson's own account of hypertext history from his 1960 Xanadu idea through Engelbart to the Web.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics 6 - The Real Story of the World Wide Web Nelson explains why he sees the Web as a shallow, one-way-link simplification of the hypertext he proposed.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ### Computers for Cynics N - CLOSURE: Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain Closing episode of the Computers for Cynics series, Nelson's summing-up of who decides what computers are.TheTedNelson on YouTube; Ted Nelson speaking ## Context: not him, but about the world he describes Hyperland, in which he appears on camera; Engelbart's 1968 demo; a podcast on Xanadu; Jaron Lanier at Intertwingled; an OpenXanadu walkthrough. ### Douglas Adams - Hyperland Not a Nelson talk: the 1990 BBC documentary written by Douglas Adams, with Tom Baker. Nelson appears on camera explaining Xanadu, a year before the first web browser.UJ ObscureMedia on YouTube; context, not him ### 1968 "Mother of All Demos" with Doug Engelbart & Team (1/3) [re-mastered] Not Nelson: Douglas Engelbart's December 1968 SRI demo of the mouse, hypertext linking and collaborative editing, the first working hypertext Nelson's ideas were measured against.Doug Engelbart Institute on YouTube; context, not him ### The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968) Not Nelson: a single-video full-length upload of Engelbart's 1968 demo, useful as one embed rather than the three-part Institute version.Marcel on YouTube; context, not him ### Episode 55 - Project Xanadu Not Nelson: a computing-history podcast episode narrating Project Xanadu's story from 1960 through the Autodesk/XOC years to the Web.Advent Of Computing on YouTube; context, not him ### Jaron at "Intertwingled" festival, 2014 Not Nelson speaking: Jaron Lanier's tribute talk at Chapman University's April 2014 Intertwingled celebration of Nelson's work, posted on Nelson's own channel.TheTedNelson on YouTube; context, not him ### OpenXanaduDemo Not Nelson: a walkthrough of OpenXanadu, the 2014 browser-based 'working deliverable' of Xanadu with visible parallel transclusions.Jack Seay on YouTube; context, not him --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Quotes # Only the lines he actually wrote or said. Each quotation names the book, page or web page it comes from, and most link to his own site. Nothing here is from a quote aggregator. Spelling and his double-hyphen dashes are kept. ## In his words - By 'hypertext' I mean non-sequential writing-- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. Literary Machines, 1981 (section 0/2). [Wikipedia, Literary Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines). - Everything is deeply intertwingled ... there are no 'subjects' at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974 (Dream Machines side). [Wikipedia, Intertwingularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity). - You can and must understand computers NOW. Computer Lib, 1974, the cover slogan. [Wikipedia, Computer Lib/Dream Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines). - The purpose of computers is human freedom. Computer Lib, 1974, as he quotes himself on his OneLiners page. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - No one's life has yet been simplified by a computer. Computer Lib, 1974, via his OneLiners page. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - In 1974, computers were oppressive devices in far-off airconditioned places. Now you can be oppressed by computers in your own living room. Computer Lib, 1987 edition, via his OneLiners page. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - The Xanadu project did not 'fail to invent HTML'. HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. Wikipedia carries the longer form: '... ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.'. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - Trying to fix HTML is like trying to graft arms and legs onto hamburger. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - The Web is the minimal concession to hypertext that a sequence-and-hierarchy chauvinist could possibly make. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - Imitating paper on a computer screen is like tearing the wings off a 747 and using it as a bus on the highway. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - Calling a hierarchical directory a 'folder' doesn't change its nature any more than calling a prison guard a 'counselor'. Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners, 1999. [his OneLiners page, 1999](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html). - We hope for vindication, the last laugh, and recognition as an additional standard-- electronic documents with visible connections. Project Xanadu home page, xanadu.com. [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/). - SOMEONE has to have a different point of view. His Keio-era home page at xanadu.com.au/ted. [his Keio-era home page](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/). - The world would have been a better place if I had succeeded, but I ain't dead yet. Accepting an honorary doctorate at Chapman University, 2014, as reported by Wikipedia. [Wikipedia, Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson). - Designer, Generalist, Contrarian. How he describes himself on his Who I Am page, 1998. [his own Who I Am page](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/). ## What others said - Tesla:Electricity = Nelson:Digital. All of the web is essentially a pale shadow of one of Ted Nelson's dreams. Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, quoted by the Internet Archive, 2010. [Source](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). - Ted Nelson is the Thomas Paine of the Information Revolution. Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, quoted by the Internet Archive, 2010. [Source](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). - A truly first-class mind ... one of the dozen or so most brilliant people I've met. Eric Raymond, quoted by the Internet Archive, 2010. [Source](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/). - Xanadu, a global hypertext publishing system, is the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. Gary Wolf, Wired, June 1995, the opening of The Curse of Xanadu; Nelson disputed the article at length. [Source](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/). - Essential reading as background, enthusiasm and ideas on hypertext. Tim Berners-Lee, on Literary Machines, his CERN hypertext pages, 1992. [Source](https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html). - A 'systems humanist' designer whose vision of a Utopian world of intellect focused around the computer screen foresaw, from the 1960s, the kind of cyberworld that has been opened forty years later. Oxford Internet Institute, his fellow profile. [Source](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/). --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Links # Where to find him. His official and real sites first. This fan site does not publish his email or other contact details; his own pages carry what he chooses to share. ## His official / real sites - [xanadu.com](https://xanadu.com/), Project Xanadu - [hyperland.com](https://hyperland.com/), his home page - [youtube.com/thetednelson](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson), his channel - [computerlibbook.com](https://computerlibbook.com/), his store ## His own pages - Project XanaduHis project site, in his own hand: Founded 1960 * The Original Hypertext Project.[https://xanadu.com/](https://xanadu.com/) - Ted Nelson home pagehyperland.com: the three videos he most wants you to see, and a pointer to his channel.[https://hyperland.com/](https://hyperland.com/) - His YouTube channelyoutube.com/thetednelson, about eighty videos.[https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson](https://www.youtube.com/thetednelson) - Computer Lib / Dream Machines, from the authorHis store for the republished book.[https://computerlibbook.com/](https://computerlibbook.com/) - His Keio-era home pagexanadu.com.au/ted: Who I Am, What I Do, What They Say, ZigZag, CosmicBook.[https://xanadu.com.au/ted/](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/) - Who I Am (1998)His self-description, degrees, coined words and mentors.[https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/) - Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners (1999)The source of most of the quotations people repeat.[https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html) ## About him, elsewhere - WikipediaThe encyclopedia article.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson) - WikidataQ62852.[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62852](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q62852) - Oxford Internet Institute profileHis fellowship page.[https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/) - Possiplex at the Internet ArchiveThe 2010 launch and the book.[https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/) - Where My Ideas Came From-- for BrewsterHis 2018 essay at the Internet Archive.[https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11](https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11) - Ted Nelson and Xanadu, CERN 1992Tim Berners-Lee's page on him.[https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html](https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html) - Encounters with HCI PioneersBen Shneiderman's page, with two poems for him.[https://hcipioneers.wordpress.com/portfolio/nelson-ted/](https://hcipioneers.wordpress.com/portfolio/nelson-ted/) - The Curse of Xanadu, Wired 1995The article he has spent decades answering.[https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/) Want to correct something on this site? It is run by the WholeTech network; write to [wholetech.com/contact](https://wholetech.com/contact/). Corrections from Mr. Nelson himself get applied the same day. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / Sources # Where every fact came from. Built 2026-09-14 from his own pages, Wikipedia, the Oxford Internet Institute, the Internet Archive, Tim Berners-Lee's 1992 CERN pages, Wired and the ACM. Nothing was invented; anything unverifiable was left out, and the disagreements between sources are shown rather than resolved. - Wikipedia: Ted NelsonBiography, career, publications, honors. Fetched 14 September 2026.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson) - Wikipedia: Project XanaduHistory, the seventeen rules, people, OpenXanadu.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu) - Wikipedia: Computer Lib/Dream MachinesThe 1974 book and its 1987 edition.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines) - Wikipedia: Literary MachinesEditions, subtitle, definition of hypertext.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Machines) - Wikipedia: Hypertext, Transclusion, Intertwingularity, ZigZagConcept histories and the 1965 citation.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext) - Wikipedia: Ralph Nelson and Celeste HolmHis parents.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeste_Holm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeste_Holm) - Project Xanadu (xanadu.com)His project site: Founded 1960 * The Original Hypertext Project.[https://xanadu.com/](https://xanadu.com/) - Ted Nelson home page (hyperland.com)Points to his YouTube channel and the three videos he most wants seen.[https://hyperland.com/](https://hyperland.com/) - Who I Am (ted.hyperland.com, 1998)His self-description, degrees, coined words, mentors and awards.[https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/](https://ted.hyperland.com/whoIam/) - Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners (1999)The source of the HTML, hamburger, 747 and folder lines.[https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html) - Keio-era home page (xanadu.com.au/ted)Project professor at Keio SFC; ZigZag, CosmicBook, the motto.[https://xanadu.com.au/ted/](https://xanadu.com.au/ted/) - Oxford Internet Institute profileFellowship dates, Wadham, the systems humanist description, the 2001 honor.[https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/ted-nelson/) - Internet Archive blog, 15 October 2010The Possiplex launch and the Kapor, Brand and Raymond quotations.[https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/](https://blog.archive.org/2010/10/15/ted-nelson-launches-his-autobiography-at-internet-archive/) - Where My Ideas Came From-- for Brewster (2018)His own account of the origin of hypertext.[https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11](https://archive.org/details/HTbrewD11) - Tim Berners-Lee, Ted Nelson and Xanadu (CERN, 1992)Literary Machines as essential reading.[https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html](https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Products/Xanadu/Xanadu.html) - Wired 3.06, The Curse of Xanadu (June 1995)Gary Wolf's article; the vaporware line quoted from the article itself.[https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/) - ACM Digital LibraryThe 1965 paper record, doi 10.1145/800197.806036.[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800197.806036](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800197.806036) - Encounters with HCI Pioneers (Ben Shneiderman)SIGCHI 2014 award, the Ted Nelson Newcomer Award.[https://hcipioneers.wordpress.com/portfolio/nelson-ted/](https://hcipioneers.wordpress.com/portfolio/nelson-ted/) - ACM SIGCHI 2014 awardsSpecial Recognition Award.[https://archive.sigchi.org/awards/sigchi-award-recipients/2014-sigchi-awards/](https://archive.sigchi.org/awards/sigchi-award-recipients/2014-sigchi-awards/) - San Francisco Chronicle obituary, Marlene Mallicoat (2015)Collaborator from 1992, later his wife.[https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=174972671](https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=174972671) - computerlibbook.comHis store for the republished Computer Lib/Dream Machines.[https://computerlibbook.com/](https://computerlibbook.com/) - YouTube oEmbedEvery video ID on this site was checked against YouTube's oEmbed endpoint for title and channel.[https://www.youtube.com/oembed](https://www.youtube.com/oembed) - Wikimedia Commons APIEvery photograph's license and author were read from Commons metadata.[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ted_Nelson](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ted_Nelson) ## Left out on purpose His contact details, which appear on his own pages. The Forbes line about the Orson Welles of software and a reported 1978 meeting with IBM, neither confirmed from a primary source. Any award, quotation or date not in the sources above. The cover of Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which is still under copyright. ## Photographs All from Wikimedia Commons under the licences shown, downloaded and hosted here rather than hotlinked. No AI-generated images anywhere on this site. - Ted Nelson presenting Project Xanadu at SuperHappyDevHouse, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, 19 February 2011Dgies, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_at_SuperHappyDevHouse.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_at_SuperHappyDevHouse.jpg) - Ted Nelson at The Tech Museum, San Jose, February 2011Dgies, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_cropped.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_cropped.jpg) - Ted Nelson at the Homebrew Computer Club reunion, 11 November 2013, where he was the featured speakerGotanero, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_(November_2013).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_(November_2013).jpg) - Ted Nelson, October 2011Gisle Hannemyr, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson.jpg) - Ted Nelson at the Internet Archive, San Francisco, 8 October 2010, the night he launched PossiplexBeatrice Murch, CC BY 2.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_-_5078420419.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_-_5078420419.jpg) - Ted Nelson at the Internet Archive, San Francisco, 8 October 2010Beatrice Murch, CC BY 2.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_-_5078423031.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_-_5078423031.jpg) - Ted Nelson in front of a projected document, San Francisco, 8 October 2010Beatrice Murch, CC BY 2.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_Rebranded_-_5078417937.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_Rebranded_-_5078417937.jpg) - Ted Nelson speaking at OpenTech, London, 23 July 2005, beneath his slide: Today's computer world is based on tekkie misunderstandings of human thought and human lifeLoopZilla, CC BY-SA 1.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_Opentech2005.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted_Nelson_Opentech2005.jpg) - Ted Nelson at Keio University, 1999, with a ZigZag display and its colour-coded keyboardBelinda Barnet, CC BY-SA 4.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted-nelson-1999.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ted-nelson-1999.jpg) - The Hypertext Editing System console at Brown University, October 1969: the IBM 2250 display and light pen of the system Nelson consulted on in 1967Gregory Lloyd, CC BY 2.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HypertextEditingSystemConsoleBrownUniv1969.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HypertextEditingSystemConsoleBrownUniv1969.jpg) - Life magazine's 1945 illustration of Vannevar Bush's memex, the desk of linked microfilm that Nelson names among the origins of his ideasTime Inc. (Life magazine), public domain[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Memex_(3002477109).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Memex_(3002477109).jpg) - Vannevar Bush, whose 1945 essay As We May Think described the memexOffice for Emergency Management (OEM Defense), Library of Congress cph.3a37339, public domain[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vannevar_Bush_portrait.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vannevar_Bush_portrait.jpg) - Douglas Engelbart at SRI in December 1968, the month of the demonstration later called the Mother of All DemosSRI International, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SRI_Douglas_Engelbart_1968.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SRI_Douglas_Engelbart_1968.jpg) - Douglas Engelbart in 2008; Nelson delivered his eulogy at the Computer History Museum in 2013Alex Handy, CC BY-SA 2.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douglas_Engelbart_in_2008.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douglas_Engelbart_in_2008.jpg) - Parrish Hall, Swarthmore College, where Nelson took his B.A. in philosophy and where the 1979 Xanadu summer was heldKungming2, CC BY 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swarthmore_Parrish_Hall.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swarthmore_Parrish_Hall.jpg) - The main gate of Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus, where he was visiting professor from 1996 and took his Ph.D. in 2002Karadameguricha, CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keio_University_Shonan_Fujisawa_Campus_Main_Gate.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keio_University_Shonan_Fujisawa_Campus_Main_Gate.jpg) - The front door of the Oxford Internet Institute, where he was a Fellow from 2004Abullard, CC BY-SA 4.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxford_Internet_Institute_Front_Door.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxford_Internet_Institute_Front_Door.jpg) - Celeste Holm in 1947, the year of her Academy Award for Gentleman's AgreementUnknown (studio publicity), public domain[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Studio_publicity_Celeste_Holm.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Studio_publicity_Celeste_Holm.jpg) - Celeste Holm in 1955MGM studio, public domain[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celeste_Holm-1955.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celeste_Holm-1955.jpg) - Ralph Nelson in 1973, photographed by one of his childrenRBNRP (photographed by his child), CC BY-SA 3.0[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Ralph_Nelson.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Ralph_Nelson.jpg) --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com. [Home](https://tednelsonfan.com/) / FAQ # Questions people ask about him. Short answers, each traceable to the sources page. **Who is Ted Nelson?** Theodor Holm Nelson (born 17 June 1937) is the American information-technology pioneer, philosopher and sociologist who coined hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and founded Project Xanadu, the original hypertext project, in 1960. He wrote Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) and Literary Machines (1981), and is the son of director Ralph Nelson and actress Celeste Holm. **Did Ted Nelson invent hypertext?** He coined the word in 1963 and published it in 1965, and he started the first hypertext project, Xanadu, in 1960. Vannevar Bush described the memex in 1945, Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a working linked-text system in 1968, and Nelson consulted on Brown University's Hypertext Editing System in 1967. The name and the fully worked-out idea of a worldwide connected literature are his; the Web is Tim Berners-Lee's 1989-91 narrowing of it. **What is Project Xanadu?** A design, begun in 1960, for a worldwide system of electronic documents with visible two-way links, transclusion (content shown by reference and still connected to its origin), version management and micropayment to authors. Autodesk backed it from 1988 to 1992; the source was released as Udanax; XanaduSpace appeared in 2007 and OpenXanadu, a working deliverable, in 2014. It lives at xanadu.com. **What is transclusion?** Nelson's word for the same content knowably in more than one place: a passage included in a document by reference rather than by copying, so it stays connected to its source, updates with it, and can carry payment back to its author. Named in Literary Machines (1981); Nelson says the idea is already in his 1965 paper. **What does intertwingled mean?** From Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974): everything is deeply intertwingled, there are no subjects at all, only all knowledge, because the cross-connections among topics cannot be divided up neatly. It is his argument against hierarchies, folders and one-way links. **What is Computer Lib/Dream Machines?** His 1974 self-published book with two front covers. Computer Lib, the political half, told readers they could and must understand computers now; Dream Machines, the other half, described hypermedia and Xanadu. Microsoft Press issued a revised edition in 1987, and he sells his own republication at computerlibbook.com. **Where did Ted Nelson study?** B.A. in philosophy, Swarthmore College (1959); a year of graduate sociology at the University of Chicago; M.A. in sociology, Harvard (1963 on his own page, 1962 on Wikipedia); Ph.D. in media and governance, Keio University (2002). **Who are Ted Nelson's parents?** Ralph Nelson (1916-1987), the Emmy-winning director of Requiem for a Heavyweight, Lilies of the Field and Charly, and Celeste Holm (1917-2012), who won an Academy Award for Gentleman's Agreement and was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma!. They married in 1936 and divorced in 1939. **What awards has Ted Nelson received?** The Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award (1998); Officier des Arts et Lettres from France (2001); the ACM SIGCHI Special Recognition Award (2014); an honorary Doctor of Science from Chapman University (2014). ACM's Hypertext conference names its newcomer award after him. **What did Wired's The Curse of Xanadu say?** Gary Wolf's June 1995 article called Xanadu the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry and told the story of the Autodesk years. Nelson disputed it in a written rebuttal and, in 2019, a feature-length video, The Jackal's Curse. **Where can I watch Ted Nelson?** His own channel, youtube.com/thetednelson, holds about eighty videos including the Computers for Cynics series and Xanadu demonstrations. This site's videos page lists nineteen recordings of him that were verified against YouTube's own metadata, plus context videos labeled as not him. **Is this Ted Nelson's official website?** No. This is an independent fan and tribute site. His real sites are xanadu.com (Project Xanadu) and hyperland.com (his home page). Nothing here is endorsed by him. **How can I contact Ted Nelson?** Through his own pages at xanadu.com and hyperland.com. This site does not publish his contact details. --- An independent fan and tribute site celebrating the work of Ted Nelson. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or the official site of Ted Nelson or Project Xanadu. His real sites are xanadu.com and hyperland.com.