
Ted Nelson struggles with uncomprehending radio interviewer (1979) [audio] - pmoriarty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU62CQTXFI
======
nicklaf
It would be interesting to ask whether or not Ted Nelson's vision for personal
computing has been achieved. In the podcast, personal computing was to be the
means of liberation from a centralized priesthood on the one hand, and from
ignorance (i.e., access to means of learning) on the other.

Personal computers are now ubiquitous, and we've been liberated from central
priesthoods which had restricted access to (expensive) computers in the past.
But new forms of centralization emerge, whether they arise in the form of
bloated, draconian corporate software foisted on workers within a company, or
as public products such as Google and Facebook, which have been gobbling up
the open web and replacing it with means of control and manipulation. [1]

In fact, this latter concern of manipulation begs the question of what people
really need computers for, and brings into question Ted Nelson's presumed
answer to it: i.e., that people have an inherent need to use computers to
facilitate their own creativity. But what about the possibility that the
majority of people prefer to be passive consumers? Neil Postman warned that we
would become a trivial society, rife with distraction, like in Huxley's _Brave
New World_. [2]

Perhaps computers have succeeded in universally capturing our imagination, but
corporations (centralization!) have once again captured computing, and by
extension our imagination as well, as Tim Wu laments [1]: am I more likely to
open up my personal computer at odd moments of the day to check Facebook or
Hacker News to momentarily capture my imagination? Or have I instead acquired
the habit of pulling out a tablet to accumulate further progress in a creative
work, which perhaps only requires internet connectivity for the purpose of
reference? And if the answer is the former, is the reason because we don't
have actual Dynabooks [3], but instead a more asymmetric device skewed toward
consumption and away from creative expression? Or is it because the majority
of people in fact prefer passive consumption anyway?

[1]
[http://www.timwu.org/AttentionMerchants.html](http://www.timwu.org/AttentionMerchants.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook)

~~~
jdietrich
>But what about the possibility that the majority of people prefer to be
passive consumers?

By any reasonable measure, we're in a renaissance of creativity. Most people
in the creative industries are complaining of a total oversaturation of talent
- too many bands, too many authors, too many artists, too many indie game
developers, too many stand-up comedians.

Maker culture and 3D printing has created a consumer market for CAD/CAM
software, which no-one in the industry foresaw even a decade ago. By some
measures, musical instruments and recording equipment are a bigger market than
the recording industry. It has never been cheaper or easier to turn an idea
into reality; there's abundant evidence that people are grabbing that
opportunity with both hands.

YouTube is full of crap, but it has also revealed a huge amount of demand for
deep and meaningful content. My YouTube subs box is full of artisans,
mathematicians, poets and monks. Some of them have seven-figure subscriber
counts and five-figure Patreon revenue, some of them upload simply for the joy
of sharing something that they love. It's easy to be cynical, but YouTube is a
place of boundless magic and wonder.

The internet isn't perfect, but it's not all doom and gloom either. The
internet is full of assholes calling each other nazis, but it's also full of
people sharing skills and making meaningful connections. Sturgeon's Law isn't
going away, but we really have removed the stultifying layer of gatekeepers
that controlled access to the media. There's an uncomfortable degree of
consolidation and centralisation on the modern internet, but MySpace and
Snapchat stand as testaments to how fickle and fragile that power is.

To quote Ted Nelson in this interview: _" The computer is a projective device,
it is a Rorschach test. Anyone will see in it that which is of the most
concern to him."_ If we choose to spend our time on the internet decrying the
negative rather than contributing to the positive, we will get exactly what we
deserve.

~~~
KineticLensman
> By any reasonable measure, we're in a renaissance of creativity

There is a really interesting historical pattern here where new communications
technologies create an initial splurge of independent creators but after some
time the technology is consolidated into a smaller number of platforms (by
regulation or monopolisation or sometimes both) that provide the main route
for content to its consumers. These platforms tend to stifle peer competitors
and are only replaced by disruptive rivals. Creativity on the platform depends
on how much it stifles the content, the classic example being the Hollywood
film industry in the 1940s .. 1960s which was highly vertically integrated and
thus became an excellent vehicle for enforcing the so-called Hays Code, which
defined morally acceptable content and attitudes.

This idea is explored really well in the 2010 book ‘The Master Switch’ by Tim
Wu [1] who shows how this pattern is played out with Radio, Films, Television
and latterly the Internet. It would be really interesting to see an update to
this excellent book to reflect the consolidation of Google, Amazon, Facebook,
etc since it was published.

My own concern is that because the internet is perhaps more pervasive than the
prior media, any lockdown could have more severe chilling effects. As an
extreme, consider future cloud-based compute appliances that don’t allow side-
loaded software and whose content creation tools delete or report
inappropriate language.

[Edit - just noticed a similar comment from Jedd below. Next time I should
read a bit further before commenting!]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code)

------
Jedd
While the host - Max Allen - is certainly a bit obtuse and doesn't share the
same technical insights & visions of Ted Nelson (hardly surprising given they
had significantly different experience and careers) he's respectful of his
guest (doesn't interrupt or talk over), concedes various points willingly,
appears to genuinely want to understand, and actually enjoys the discussion.

The nostalgia sensation isn't just around Ted's prescience.

~~~
taberiand
His viewpoint is also rather reasonable considering the context of the
interview, at the dawn of the information age. It's a little depressing
however that it's not uncommon to still encounter that point of view today.

------
DonHopkins
I love his criticism of IBM (and the literary adjective that perfectly
describes IBM that I learned today):

Q: Tell me about IBM?

A: What would you like to know? _OMINOUS LAUGH_

Q: Well, I'd like to know what's wrong with them, to start with, since that's
what you want to talk about.

A: Ok. IBM is first and foremost a very slick sales organization, which was
created in the image of Thomas J. Watson, a supreme despot, and very
imaginative salesman who managed to create an organization with less fat in --
pardon me -- less local fat than any other corporation that ever happened.

And one that has over the years learned to devote teams to getting things
done. That's the positive side. Get these things done with dispatch and with
earnestness.

Now whether they're done the way one would like to see them done if one
contemplated what the real nature of a problem, this is and entirely different
manner. And critics of such things as IBM's 360 and 370 computers would say
that they are were Brobdingnagian, clumsy and surrounded by unnecessary
difficulties.

And this of course is why many people like the kids who showed me around the
University of Waterloo this morning far prefer to use systems like Digital
Equipment machines which are much more accessible to the sophisticated user.

Anyway, the question is why has IBM prevailed in its way, and the answer is
that they have a sort of monopoly. And one which obviously has a political
side and a technical side. And the problem is now that as they are swinging
their new communication system into place, it seems increasingly likely that
this communication system is more built to maintain the monopoly than it is
built to satisfy the needs of what people ought to have.

Q: What communication system?

A: Oh there's something called Satellite Business Systems, which IBM and Aetna
Life Insurance and I think a few other partners have created in a joint
venture.

~~~
dluan
The following short segment is great.

"What's swinging into place Max, is that we have great communication networks
now coming about for the transmission of digital information.

Now by digital we just mean symbols. There's this mistake that digital means
in numbers. That's wrong. The two commonest programming languages are musical
notation and knitting instructions.

That's not fu... why are you laughing."

Knitting was really big back then.

~~~
fapjacks
Knitting is really big still. One of the biggest lobbies for copyright and IP
legislation is (no kidding) the industry that creates patterns for sewing and
knitting. Put out feelers on social media, see how many of your associates
knit which you didn't know about. It was surprising to me for some reason to
find out how pervasive it is.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Wait, by sewing pattern industry, do you mean the fashion industry?

~~~
fapjacks
Haha that's a great question, but no, there is actually a different set of
companies selling patterns for sewing and knitting (traditionally to their
target demographic of older ladies). Companies that typically sell patterns to
places like Hobby Lobby or Michaels, this kind of thing, and not companies
like Old Navy and Forever21 and the like. In that industry, patterns are sort
of like patents in a way, and these companies have amassed huge libraries of
patterns and aggressively defend them with litigation. I'll dig a bit to see
if I can find information about the specific events I'm thinking of, but the
gist of it was that alongside Napster I believe, one of the biggest and
earliest instances of copyright/IP litigation was against little old ladies
who were using P2P to fileshare sewing and knitting patterns. This was before
the RIAA started suing customers, and I believe it actually partly served as
the inspiration for the RIAA stupidly choosing to go that route. It's been
some years since I've read the story, so I'm likely not remembering some
details correctly. Edit: I can't find a link to the story I'm thinking of, but
you can actually find some side effects of this litigation, for example this
"copyright notice" (especially read the actual PDF as this notice was pretty
clearly issued to protect the interests of these pattern companies I'm talking
about): [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-
notice-...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-notice-
knitting-and-sewing-patterns)

------
pmoriarty
This reminds me of trying to convince a FidoNet BBS sysop in the late 80's to
try the Internet. He adamantly refused, saying FidoNet would be all he'd ever
need.

It also reminds me of arguing in the 80's with an IBM PC user that the Amiga's
4096 colors were desirable. He insisted that 16 colors were all he'd ever
need.

I also tried to turn my dad on to the Internet and Usenet newsgroups in the
late 80's. That failed too. He just wasn't interested.

I guess I'm just not a very good salesman.

------
unimpressive
The funny thing is that early on in this interview the host tells Nelson that
he's the only one saying anything about using computers to store and retrieve
text. But that's simply not true, certainly not in 1979. For example, John
McCarthy had been describing what largely came to be our digital literary
future as early as 1970:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10370990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10370990)

Even within the contemporary environment a significant fraction of computer
use was not 'number crunching', but the sorting, retrieval, and printing of
essentially textual information. (i.e, records) Records are tiny documents,
which to me makes this early portion where Ted accepts the point without
argument a large missed opportunity to get the point across.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMYiktO0D64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMYiktO0D64)

~~~
8bitsrule
_1979_

Even 10 years later. In the mid-80s (by which time BYTE magazine was as big as
a Sears catalog) I wrote a piece on the approach of the PC era and offered it
to a smaller (100K) town's newspaper editor. His response: 'That's kind of a
nitch product isn't it?'

The bigger newspapers were already moving completely to computers, but such
facts hadn't really reached such guys.

------
shagie
Started listening, ok, sounds like an interesting person. Check the Wikipedia
page on him...

> Theodor Holm "Ted" Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of
> information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms
> hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and published them in 1965.[1] Nelson
> coined the terms transclusion,[1] virtuality,[2] and intertwingularity (in
> Literary Machines), and teledildonics[3].

tele... is that what I think it is? Click link. Yep.

The interview is _really_ interesting and how much he got right about the past
30 years.

~~~
oh_sigh
[https://archive.org/stream/Mondo.2000.Issue.02.1990#page/n53...](https://archive.org/stream/Mondo.2000.Issue.02.1990#page/n53/mode/2up)

------
miguelrochefort
This is how I feel about computers today. They're a mess. The fragmentation of
hardware, operating systems, apps, websites, programming languages and
frameworks is horrible.

I frequently ask people how they feel about the current state of software.
Most people think it's fine, they don't have a problem with it. They can't
imagine how else it could be. This drives me mad.

I have 100 apps on my phone. None of them talk to each other. Every new
appliance, restaurant and event has its own app. These 100 apps will quickly
turn into 1000. Clearly, the application paradigm doesn't scale. Where is it
going to end?

We're still emulating the physical world in software. File systems are still
trees. Programming is still done with text. Paragraphs are still copy-pasted,
rather than dynamically embedded. We barely made any progress since that radio
interview. Xanadu is still vaporware.

What will it take for a software revolution to take place?

~~~
sverige
AI is going to invent that revolutionary software, but unfortunately you and I
won't understand it or be able to manipulate it. Be careful what you wish for.

~~~
calebh
Imo gradient descent is not going to get us to general AI. I'm a programming
languages theory person, and I also know a fair bit about machine learning.
The current problem with neural networks is that they suck at processing
variable length data, and they have problems with remembering the past.
Programs can be represented by trees, graphs, or text. Deep learning isn't
great at dealing with graphs or trees, and it's not that good at text either.

The other issue is that deep learning works great for recognizing common
patterns, but it sucks when faced with novel situations. So I don't think that
we're going to have programs that program anytime soon. The first applications
of AI to programming will probably be with programming assistants or with AI
guided proof solvers. Programmer productivity will improve, but we're not
going to see everyone losing their jobs.

~~~
nmca
The latter of those two points is much more valid than the former. You're
comment about generalisation difficulty is pretty accurate, but as for "sucks
at variable length data", I think neural machine translation [0] and the fact
that schemes including RNNs just won M4 [1] indicate that this is incorrect.
Your point about remembering the past is true (it's hard), but people are
actively working on it. Unitary neural nets, and the fast/slow weight paradigm
are very different angles that seem promising.

As for handling trees + graphs, this actually works very well. Thomas Kipf is
pushing this area forward, GATs [2] are a nice random example of how dominant
differentiable programming (eg NNs) can be in this area. Unfortunately these
graph approaches don't parallelise as nicely on GPUs as CNNs.

Your predictions (assistants) seem likely to me.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.09849](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.09849) [1]
[https://www.m4.unic.ac.cy](https://www.m4.unic.ac.cy) [2]
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10903](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10903)

------
andyidsinga
this! Interviewer: "I don't understand what the necessity of an electronic
device called a computer, or anything else like that - a computer screen to
use your word - is in making people smarter. I don't think another gadget is
going to have any effect at all"

... I can't tell you how many times I've heard this gadget/toy statement since
I first got a computer when I was around 10.

On the flip side - there are so many people with open minds willing to give
things a shot (and often a not inexpensive one at that) ...thanks for giving
me those computers mom - and then enjoying watching what happened :)

(edit : typos)

------
thsowers
This is a great listen. The interviewer doesn't seem to understand that there
are hard limits to humans ability to search, compute, organize, notice
patterns etc

------
samueloph
Ok, so i didn't know Ted Nelson, from his wikipedia page: "Theodor Holm "Ted"
Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology,
philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in
1963 and published them in 1965."

I'm impressed.

------
Rapzid
Really great interview. Ideas should be challenged, and the value we, the
audience, get from the responses to challenge is great. Not enough of this in
the mainstream today.

------
EthanHeilman
Ted Nelson in continuing in a thread of argument first put forth first by Ada
Lovelace:

"Again, it might act upon other things besides number, were objects found
whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract
science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to
the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing,
for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science
of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and
adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music
of any degree of complexity or extent."

Sketch of The Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage By L. F. MENABREA
of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers With notes upon the Memoir by the
Translator ADA AUGUSTA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html)

------
cm2187
To be honest I wouldn't be convinced myself that I would need a personal
computer to better index my pieces of text at home.

Searching through un-indexed text would have been a far more powerful
argument. I remember reading the memoir of a DGSE analyst (the DGSE is the
french equivalent of the CIA). As always, the reality of secret services is
far less sexy than its popular image and the book has an entire chapter about
the importance of good (pre-computer area) archives about everything, every
conversation any analyst had with anyone, any book or article written by any
public figure, anytime someone is mentioned in any anecdote, etc. And how the
essence of being a good analyst is to know these archives inside out, how to
quickly browse through when looking for what we know on someone or a topic. On
a personal computer that would have been a simple CTR-F.

~~~
Doxin
To be fair, that "un-indexed text" is still indexed. The indexing process is
just hidden from the user and fully automated.

------
KirinDave
Wow, it's interesting that Ted says the use a computer "during the war" for
for trajectory calculations. I wonder if he believes that, or if he's simply
avoiding a very complex conversation about information theory and cryptography
that in the 70s was both less well-understood and less popular.

I wonder if instead he's referring to some other specific event that in the
subsequent 50 years we've decided is insignificant to the formation of
computers.

~~~
ipsin
They used computers during WW II for rangekeeping [1]. They were complicated
and heavy electromechanical beasts.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer)

~~~
KirinDave
Right but this was NOT the most historically significant application of
computers in WW2 by a long shot.

That's why I'm wondering if this is a visible example of how history tends to
redefine significance and refocus on different events over time.

~~~
stan_rogers
Calculating trajectory tables for artillery was ENIAC's primary job as well.

------
miguelrochefort
We're still very far from the connected and unified future Ted Nelson had in
mind, yet I can't seem to find many people interested in solving that.

Where are these people?

~~~
dustingetz
I'm in that space, link in my profile (not that it is recognizable as a
hyperdata system yet, nonetheless it is). Why do you ask – are you?

------
xamuel
Interesting how they mention the coming war between the "computer centers" and
the personal computer. And now looking back, we see that's a war that's been
fought time and time again, and now we're fighting it all over again with the
whole Cloud thing. Next week Cloud'll be out and desktops back in.

------
braindead_in
Here's a transcript, if you want to skim through it.

[https://scribie.com/transcript/290d2d5d863e4353b3843816aade9...](https://scribie.com/transcript/290d2d5d863e4353b3843816aade9749d6899bde)

------
Kaius
"It is possible to insist that every changes is merely a small change in
degree, rather than a change in kind."

Good quote from Ted.

------
jonahx
The vicarious frustration in this listen was deep.

It's not only a fascinating time-capsule, but a palpable reminder of how
revolutionary ideas can be received. The clarity of Ted's thought and vision
here is striking even by today's standards, and despite his patience and
articulate explanations he might as well be talking to a brick wall.

The Swift quote came to mind:

> When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that
> the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

~~~
abecedarius
[http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-
an...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/)

~~~
rocky1138
> When people ask me about my life’s ambitions, I often joke that my goal is
> to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done.
> Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them
> first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this
> will be a major labor saving improvement.

Honestly this is so good. I feel exactly the same.

------
ehnto
That title had me thinking he was trying to unthink an epiphany the radio
presenter had enlightened him with.

------
andyidsinga
I'm listening to this for the second time - I think there will be more.

------
redwood
Shadow IT goes back a long way!

------
BenjiWiebe
"Remarkable that humanity survived without [a computer] all this time."
-sarcastic

"Yes it is!" -serious

~~~
dqpb
I found it striking that the majority of Max Allen's questions/arguments were
along the lines of "But isn't everything fine the way it is?"

~~~
sverige
He wasn't wrong, either. Having lived the first half of my life without a
computer at home and the second half with more and more of them, the only
thing I can say is a real improvement is that I can transfer funds from my
account to my wife's at any time. The rest isn't that great. Probably hard to
understand if you never lived without them.

~~~
mwcampbell
That's overly pessimistic. Isn't it awesome that computers have enabled
worldwide communities like this one? Asynchronous communication through text,
enabled by computers, is also a great equalizer for people with disabilities
and other differences. Blind people, deaf people, quadriplegics, people with
speech impediments (e.g. stuttering), non-native speakers of the language,
etc. can all communicate and work together, without even being aware of each
other's difficulties.

To be fair, all of that was enabled by the earliest BBSes, and I guess we
haven't made as much progress in the meantime as some people (like Engelbart
and Nelson) hoped.

~~~
sverige
You are correct about asynchronous communication, of course. That is a great
thing, and I should have included IRC / texting on the plus side.

The worldwide communities? I enjoy them, but it seems to me that it is one of
the fundamental causes of the increasing fragmentation of society. Hannah
Arendt describe this as 'atomized' society. Totalitarian regimes have
flourished in such environments.

In the old days, if you didn't fit in, you had to make an effort to find
common ground with others physically near you to enjoy a social life. This led
to a lot of seredipity and built social cohesion. Nowadays, it's a lot easier
to hate your neighbor who disagrees with you politically or culturally because
there's always a virtual means of socializing just a click away.

Nelson was a visionary to coin 'virtualization' but I think he and many others
have been far too optimistic about the end results of that ongoing experiment.
It is far easier to manipulate people into committing acts of physical
violence against their neighbors than is commonly believed in a society that
has become 'atomized,' and virtual communities are a terrific means to
creating an atomized society.

------
BenjiWiebe
Hilarious. The poor interviewer just can't comprehend at all what a computer
could be used for. Also, Ted Nelson was pretty good at predicting that a
computer would be used as a writing medium, a filling cabinet, a musical
instrument, a few more things I don't remember specifically. As I was
listening I was just silently agreeing that yep, we have that, and that, and
that already.

~~~
hindsightbias
I'd wonder if HN readers would have gotten it in the context of 1979.

It took nearly three years for someone to wonder what would happen if you
connected something like Hypercard to a network. And it wasn't Bill Atkinson.

------
putlake
Bitcoin today is where computers were in 1979. A little embarrassed to admit
it but I feel like the short-sighted interviewer who fails to see the
applications of the technology.

~~~
inteleng
Just because something new-ish exists doesn't mean it's the root of something
society-changing. Bitcoin might be a steam engine.

~~~
rinze
Bitcoins are tulips.

~~~
pinewurst
Or Cabbage Patch dolls

~~~
inteleng
Cabbage Patch Kids and tulips wear out and disintegrate like any other organic
matter. We will be lucky if bitcoin wallets from a decade ago are able to be
cracked a thousand years from now.

