Computer Lib Concepts

Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson (History of Computing)

by Douglas R. Dechow · 2 Jul 2015 · 223pp · 52,808 words

degree conferral We humbly dedicate this book to Marlene J. Mallicoat, Ted’s wife and our friend . Preface Over 40 years ago, Ted Nelson published Computer Lib / Dream Machines. It was a most unusual piece of writing. Its layout of two books in a single binding—published back-to-back, but

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reversed so that each had a front cover—was meant to confront the user’s notions of text and reading. In the Computer Lib portion, Ted wrote, “EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no ‘subjects’ at all; there is only all knowledge, since the

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On April 24, 2014, Chapman University hosted “Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson,” a conference to celebrate the anniversary of the publication of Computer Lib / Dream Machines and his many contributions to computing and to the generation of knowledge in our world. As a part of that event, Chapman University

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Ted Nelson in hyperties system [1] Keynote Speaker at Hypertext ’87 Workshop. Ted Nelson’s creative visions are amply displayed in his lively books, Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Literary Machines, which detail his hypertext vision. Nelson understood that major social and legal changes would be necessary to realize his concept

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stretched into hours and Alan Kay became the technical consultant on the movie Tron. Fig. 3.1Bonnie MacBird with a copy of Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines We spent many happy hours in conversation along Venice and Santa Monica beaches. I wrote a script filled with “cool” science. There

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performing arts, and computer geeks who have brought us the modern flood of so-called “information.” By 1974 he had met, as shown by Computer Lib/Dream Machines, a dozen times as many people in computerdom as I had. Since then, his interest and energy for collecting ideas and methods has

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What else can one do when so many people seem intentionally insane? We don’t exactly cry, but we despair at human over-reach. In Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Ted bemoaned the combination of overpopulation and resource depletion. Hate is not too strong for those who—in striving for fame, wealth, and

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in 1974 that our ecology was in bad shape and very likely to get much worse. I urge you to read again the ending of Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Later, I wrote my own independent, but similar scribbles, “Great Day in the Evening” [2] and “Brief Manifesto” [3]. What record of

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cognitive patterns: i.e., the way words flowed through our minds. In 1965 Nelson coined the term hypertext. Ultimately, in his brilliant 1974 book, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, he laid down the foundation for a communications theory transcending text. Hypertext became hypermedia. Imagery and sound played roles equal to text. Nelson

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tech. Flip the book over, start reading from the other cover and you have Dream Machines, dealing with the visionary use of computers. Stylistically Computer Lib/Dream Machines was modeled on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, interspersed with hip illustrations, weaving odd stories and quotations into the text. The book

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putting our individual expressions through the narrow bottlenecks of language, music, visual art and our species’ other various mediating structures. PS: Ted Nelson wrote in Computer Lib (1974):Everyone should have some brush with computer programming, just to see what it is and isn’t. What it is: casting mystical spells in

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Bell Labs called this the Cyclopean Retina, the cognitive locus at which we humans experience all our diverse inputs as one integrated perception. PS: In Computer Lib—remember, this was written in 1974, pre-Apple Computers, pre-Microsoft, indeed, pre-Altair, which came out in 1975—Ted wrote:A new era

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on 2000 year old things that they happen to own, God knows what’s going to happen with that…like copyrighting the human gene. PS: Computer Lib decries “the creeping evil of Professionalism.” “I see Professionalism as the spreading disease of the present-day world…” TN: I guess my claim at

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ten books a day! In the process of reading through the school library, I was very fortunate because they happened to have a copy of Computer Lib/Dream Machines. That was my first exposure to Ted and his ideas. This was about 30 years ago, around 1984. I was still in

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Douglas R. Dechow and Daniele C. Struppa (eds.)IntertwingledHistory of Computing10.1007/978-3-319-16925-5_8 8. An Advanced Book for Beginners How Computer Lib/Dream Machines Shaped Our Perspective on Cybercrud, Interactivity, Complex Texts and Computer Creativity Dick Heiser1 (1)Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA Dick Heiser Email:

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dick.heiser@gmail.com 8.1 Introduction Computer Lib/Dream Machines [1] arrived in 1974, exactly in time for the personal computer revolution. It was privately printed and published by Hugo’s Book Service

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a way to get up to speed quickly about personal computing, but there hadn’t been time for mass media to develop a perspective. Enter Computer Lib/Dream Machines. We enjoyed recommending it to everybody. The book’s enormous size and two-sided format let people know reading it was going

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The giant pages resisted being squeezed into a smaller format, and the radical changes Ted Nelson predicted in 1974 were already starting to come about. Computer Lib/Dream Machines is one of the best examples of a technically advanced book delivering a powerful vision of personal empowerment and enlightenment. It set the

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way “because that’s the way the computer requires.” Ted was the loudest voice calling out this mistake. He called this thinking cybercrud, and Computer Lib/Dream Machines was about empowering users to demand computer systems that accommodate humans rather than the other way around. Ted pointed out that video games

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will drive out the bad ones. 8.3 Interactivity David Albrecht of People’s Computer Company (PCC: what a radical name!) discovered and promoted Computer Lib. People’s Computer Company operated a timesharing BASIC computer lab in Menlo Park, and published a newsletter on interactive computing. The newsletter told me how

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What to Do After You Hit Return. One guessing game was called “Hunt the Wumpus.” It was lucky for Ted that Bob Albrecht knew about Computer Lib, because Hugo’s Book Service had few contacts among computer enthusiasts. Ted also chose only interactive interpreted languages to explain programming: TRAC, APL and

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Deeply Intertwingled” The quotation that serves as the heading for this section appeared on page D2 in the Dream Machines half of Ted’s book, Computer Lib/Dream Machines [1]. Ted was key to the development of hypertext, but he’s disappointed that we didn’t make links that work in

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which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. References 1. Nelson TH (1974) Computer lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream Machines. Hugo’s Book Service, Chicago 2. Time Machine: Robots. Robots. History Channel. Aug.–Sept. 2000.

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” to them with punch cards and got your answer on a printout. Nelson conjured a different universe from a crystal seed. Fourteen years later, in Computer Lib, he would write, “if computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards” [8, p. 22]. The second part of Nelson’s

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working. (Engelbart 1999, personal communication) As some eminent speakers discussed during the conference, this was a “paradigm problem” Nelson would later take on in Computer Lib. In fact, he did more than just take it on. He declared outright war on the established computer religion—particularly the idea that computers belong

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to a rarified priesthood. So although that declaration was best made with a raised fist (and capital letters) in Computer Lib, it had been brewing for him since 1960. For the time being, in 1965, he ignored the dominant paradigm and published his zippered list

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nobody is quite sure” (cited in [9], preface). Discussion of Xanadu still positions his work in left field. As others have discussed, in 1974, in Computer Lib, he took his idea to the public, in the hope that he may have better luck there. He argued that computers are mere changeable devices

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implementation notes, 6–10 March 1968. Xuarchives. http://xanadu.com/REF%20XUarchive%20SET%2003.11.06/hin68.tif 8. Nelson TH (1974) Computer lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream machines. Hugo’s Book Service, Chicago 9. Nelson TH (1993) Literary machines. Mindful Press, Sausalito 10.

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Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet [7]. My work was in conversation with Ted’s since I was a graduate student, having read Computer Lib early on. Ted signed my copy of Literary Machines [25] at a talk in the mid-1990s, thus I was in awe of the man

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the World Wide Web undermined Ted’s ability to implement hypertext on a large scale. He continues to rail at this constraint. Forty years after Computer Lib, computers are far more sophisticated and the networks among digital objects are much richer and more complex. It is time to revisit fundamental assumptions

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51(4):52–58. doi:10.1145/1330311.1330323 CrossRef 23. National Information Standards Organization (2004) Understanding metadata. NISO Press, Bethesda 24. Nelson TH (1974) Computer lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream machines. Hugo’s Book Service, Chicago 25. Nelson TH (1994) Literary machines, 93rd edn. Mindful Press,

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diagrams through to Memex, on the cusp of the digitized world we know (Fig. 13.1). Fig. 13.1Ted Nelson’s Desk. From Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Courtesy of Theodor Holm Nelson) The problem of the relationship between coding and thinking has always been central to the work of Theodor

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there are excellent reasons to consider Nelson’s work—from his earliest efforts such as the literary journal, Nothing, through to his visionary samizdat manifesto, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, and his recent work reconceptualizing the spreadsheet—as a guide to the universe of paper as it is to that of the screen

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13.2). Fig. 13.2In a distant future, an angel rescues Ted Nelson’s book from the flood of time. (Adapted from Theodor Holm Nelson Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Balthasar Anton Dunker, Costumes des moeurs et de l’esprit françois avant la grande Révolution à la fin du dix-huitième (1791

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paper texts to look like, and, it resonates still more strongly with what they argued it should look like. Fig. 13.3Credit: From Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Courtesy of Theodor Holm Nelson) The philosophers of the Enlightenment understood the problem of knowledge as both a matter of seeing the world

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prefigured in his print works from the multiply-folded Nothing literary magazine he published at Swarthmore to the hopscotched, inverted, and mutually dependent texts of Computer Lib/Dream Machines, to the choose-your-own-adventure numbering of Literary Machines, as well as the tea leaf patterns of Xanadu and the fractal

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, of course, the sort of thing a historian is not unhappy to contemplate (Fig. 13.8). Fig. 13.8The Apotheosis of Computer Lib (Credit: Adapted from Theodor Holm Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond

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from “hypertext” to “visualization”—perhaps no phrase is better known than, “You Can and Must Understand Computers NOW.” It was emblazoned across the Computer Lib side of his 1974 Computer Lib/Dream Machines (CL/DM), the most influential book in the history of computational media.1 Nelson’s call is not only memorable today

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it clear why CL/DM is a book with two sides. He does not aim for broader understanding of computers, through the information found in Computer Lib, simply because our society is becoming more computational in general. Rather, as he writes:My special concern, all too tightly framed here, is the

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Vawter N (2012) 10 PRINT CHR $(205.5+ RND (1));: GOTO 10. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 10. Nelson TH (1974) Computer lib: dream machines. Self published 11. Nelson TH (1987) Computer lib: dream machines. Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, Redmond 12. Perlis AJ (1961) The role of the digital computer in the university

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http://ibc.chapman.edu/Mediasite/Play/52694e57c4b546f0ba8814ec5d9223ae1d Footnotes 1For example, as Steve Wozniak said at Intertwingled, “At our computer club, the bible was Computer Lib” — referring to the Homebrew Computer Club, from which Apple Computer and other major elements of the turn to personal computers emerged [18]. 2“Computational

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, few libraries own more than a few of his published works, and several of his most important texts, such as the earliest editions of Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Literary Machines have achieved almost legendary status for being difficult to lay hands on. So where are we to turn for the

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Paul Kahn (eds) From memex to hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the mind’s machine. Academic Press, Boston, 1991, pp 245–260 Nelson TH (1974) Computer Lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream machines: new freedoms through computer screens – a minority report. Chicago: Hugo’s Book Service, for the author

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Hypertext ‘87: proceedings of the ACM conference on hypertext. HYPERTEXT ‘87. ACM, New York. pp v–vii. doi:10.1145/317426.317427 Nelson TH (1987) Computer lib …/dream machines … Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, Redmond, Revised and updated edition Nelson TH (1987) Literary machines … Edition 87.1. South Bend, Ind.: The

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about intertwingularity. This book, like the conference, is called Intertwingled. It’s a word that expresses a philosophical position about cross-connection. I said in Computer Lib [2, 6], “Everything is deeply intertwingled.” I meant that all subjects and issues are intertwined and intermingled. But intertwingled subjects are not what computers

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by others, but divided among Jobs, Gates, and Berners-Lee, all of whom did it wrong. I inspired a lot of people with my book Computer Lib, but this gives me no joy, since what they did, and the way they did it, would have happened anyway. My anomalous position in

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original author(s) and source are credited. References 1. Bush V (1945) As we may think. Atlantic 176:101–108 2. Nelson TH (1974) Computer Lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream machines. Hugo’s Book Service, Chicago 3. Nelson TH (1981) Literary machines: the report on, and of

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transclusion. Commun ACM 38(8):31–33CrossRef 5. Nelson TH (1985) Literary machines, (85.1 technical edn). Mindful Press, Swarthmore 6. Nelson TH (1987) Computer Lib: you can and must understand computers now/dream machines, Rev and updated edn. Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, Redmond 7. Nelson TH (1998) Parallel visualization

Possiplex

by Ted Nelson · 2 Jan 2010

the world who imagined a world of personal computing as a hobby, everyday activity and art form—all of which I presented in my book Computer Lib in 1974— months ahead of the first personal computer kit, which started the gold rush. • For nearly TWENTY years (until I convinced five colleagues), I

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, I think she said something about Women’s Lib”, still a hot topic in those days, and the name of my book came to me: Computer Lib. That said it all. That gave the book its slant, its direction, its tone, its agenda. It would be a book of liberation. The reader

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had set me free. Free to weep for Jean, the grandmother— the mother in all but the technical sense—that I had just lost forever. Computer Lib in the Living Room I spread the layout all over the living room. It took much longer to write because I had so much to

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own children and therefore on Swiss culture. Nevertheless, Ellie headed off, and I heard no more of her for years.) While I was working on Computer Lib, I was also a photographer for the media department at Circle Campus (it was called the Office of Instructional Resources Development). They had me writing

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: to sit down and hear it all again. However, Ellie’s translation and mellifluous voice made it less irritating. New words that I put into Computer Lib included “intertwingularity” and “dildonics.” I didn’t expect them to catch on, but they did take off, about twenty-five years later. (The more common

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form of the latter is now teledildonics, someone else’s extension.) Computer Lib Delayed I was hoping Computer Lib would be out in time for the computer graphics conference in the fall of 1974—the first SIGGRAPH*-- but it wasn’t ready

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guys in T-shirts and lumberjack shirts, I think, all surprised that so many other people were interested in computer graphics. I handed out the Computer Lib posters, thinking there’d be one-by-one orders. Then I was astounded when Ken Knowlton, a hero of mine from a decade before, ordered

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twenty! Things were looking up, I hoped. The Joy of Publishing, Fall 1974 I published Computer Lib myself, laying it out on the kitchen table, taking it to the printer, and paying the printer for the boxes of books. I thought the

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was delighted when I personally took an order from Marshall Field’s, where Jean had taken me as a boy. What I Hoped Computer Lib Would Bring With the book Computer Lib, I had a two-pronged agenda: First, to make enough money to support myself and get free of the pestilential jobs I

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turned out to be swindlers, as far as I can tell. I never saw my share for the 50,000 copies they said they sold. Computer Lib did bring some great moments of encouragement, like an order from the White House. A whole seven bucks. ''Soon we’ll be reading and writing

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. The person answering for IBM would say, ‘Oh, you want the Itty Bitty Machine Company, in Evanston!’ It was an incredible boost. Xanadu Stands (1974+) Computer Lib and The Itty Bitty Machine Company were sideshows, I was always thinking about the main thing: Xanadu. I did not intend to go to the

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might be considered as referring humorously to a domestic animal. He didn't care. What would they have said at Xerox PARC? (1) 1975 After Computer Lib came out, Dick Shoup got me an invitation to speak at PARC. For no money, of course. I found the atmosphere at PARC to be

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answer: because the diameter of the iris is finite. (Not exactly wrong, but highly unexpected.) Another student dropped in from Yale. Mark Miller had read Computer Lib and it set him on fire; he came to lecture us on his way to do a versioning tree (a topic in the book*). * I

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some early personal computer conference—I think it was Philadelphia-- with the Itty Bitty guys. I believe there was a huge display of my book Computer Lib at the entrance to the conference. I kept hearing from the Itty Bitty guys that ‘those guys at Apple want you to come and talk

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have said? (March 1986) Bill Gates was actually a supporter of mine for a time, a patron. When Microsoft published an edition of my book Computer Lib he personally signed the contract. He had me do a track keynote speech at the first Microsoft CDROM conference. Gates somehow thought, I realize now

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you like,’ he said, ‘I’ve run it into the ground already.’ What would Stewart Brand have said? ca. 1987 When Microsoft published a revised Computer Lib—an edition that still makes me deeply unhappy—they solicited comments from various people. Stewart Brand said: ‘Ted Nelson is the Thomas Paine of the

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under, falling over or narrowing down. My ideals, and my adherence to them, are untarnished. I still stand for all the principles I enunciated in Computer Lib and through the decades. I have never imitated anybody, though I have had many heroes. Many think of me a clown or a pet loony

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influence on Steve Jobs? I do believe Steve Jobs based the entire style and persona of the Apple corporation on the attitude of my book Computer Lib—the attitude of creative defiance that I offered the reader, and that Jobs invited the Apple customers to share.* * Creative defiance has always been my

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proven to be reality itself.* But the question is, where did Jobs get these ideas originally? I believe they were pretty much set forth in Computer Lib two years before the Apple I. * As of this writing, the value of Apple— its market cap— has just passed that of Microsoft. Jobs’ perceptions

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath

by Nicco Mele · 14 Apr 2013 · 270pp · 79,992 words

’ve heard of “women’s lib” coming out of the Vietnam era? Well, turns out there was “computer lib,” too. Ted Nelson’s pivotal 1974 book Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now confronted nerds everywhere with a rousing call to action, demanding that they claim computing for individuals so as

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to free them from the oppression of, you guessed it, large institutions. Computer Lib had a radical style similar to Stewart Brand’s countercultural publication The Whole Earth Catalog, yet Computer Lib devoted itself to computers, offering both a primer on the basics of programming and a breathtaking vision

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-Seltzer in a tall, cold glass of water. It was provocative and clear in its anti-institutional leanings and influenced a generation of nerds. Rereading Computer Lib today, I can’t help but marvel at Nelson’s prescience. In one section, he describes what it means to be online and in another

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is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost” and “yes folks, Apple BASIC is Free.”16 1984 During the decade after Computer Lib, as personal computers became fixtures in American homes and as computer companies became established organizations in their own right, the notion that personal computers represented

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, genuine man working hard to do good. Yet I’m concerned with the ideological, anti-institutional thread running through connective technology, from Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib” in the ’70s, to Steve Jobs’s literal and metaphorical 1984, to John Perry Barlow’s declaration of independence in the ’90s, up to Craigslist

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition

by Steven Levy · 18 May 2010 · 598pp · 183,531 words

-1 computer to hack the phone system. Later cofounded Systems Concepts company. Ted Nelson. Self-described “innovator” and noted curmudgeon who self-published the influential Computer Lib book. Russell Noftsker. Harried administrator of MIT AI lab in late sixties; later president of Symbolics company. Adam Osborne. Bangkok-born publisher-turned-computer-manufacturer

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alternative computing in Northern California. Of the distinguished visitors dropping in, none was so welcome as Ted Nelson. Nelson was the self-published author of Computer Lib, the epic of the computer revolution, the bible of the hacker dream. He was stubborn enough to publish it when no one else seemed to

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print so small you could hardly read it, along with scribbled notations, and manically amateurish drawings. The book was in two parts: one was called “Computer Lib,” the computer world according to Ted Nelson; and the other, “Dream Machines,” the computer future according to Ted Nelson. Shelling out two thousand dollars out

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,” Nelson’s book said, and though it sold slowly, it sold, eventually going through several printings. More important, it had its cult following. At PCC, Computer Lib was one more reason to believe it would soon be no secret that computers were magic. And Ted Nelson was treated like royalty at potluck

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dialogue with a version of Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA program. He got a book of BASIC programming and worked on making little routines. He read Computer Lib and got technologically politicized. He bought a teletype for his home so he could access Lawrence Hall’s computer by phone, where he’d play

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. Every day, it seemed, new things appeared to make it even clearer that the computer revolution had occurred right there. Even Ted Nelson, author of Computer Lib, called with his blessing. Bob Albrecht also called, and said he’d write a book about games on the Altair, if Roberts would send him

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technical ferocity of the discussions, the intense flame that burned brightest when people directed themselves to the hacker pursuit of building. Ted Nelson, author of Computer Lib, came to a meeting and was confused by all of it, later calling the scruffily dressed and largely uncombed Homebrew people “chip-monks, people obsessed

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Jim Warren got on the public-address system and announced the attendance—the weekend’s total was almost thirteen thousand. He was immediately followed by Computer Lib author Ted Nelson, feeling no doubt like a once lonesome guru who in one fell swoop was united with a sea of disciples. “This is

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which mandated severe tortures and complete frontal lobotomies, almost, to anyone leaking the name of the three-initial company or its plans. The predictions of Computer Lib author Ted Nelson and others that the personal computer revolution would put IBM “in disarray” had proven a pathetic underestimation of the monolithic firm. The

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8 Back issues of PCC, generously provided by Bob Albrecht, were particularly helpful for information about early seventies Bay Area hacking. Chapter 8 Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (self-published, distributed by The Distributors, South Bend, Ind., 1974). Chapter 8 Brautigan’s poem is in The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine

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, Secrets, Secrets, Secrets Compatible Time-sharing System (CTSS), Winners and Losers Compiler, The Hacker Ethic Computer Faire, Woz, Secrets, Secrets, The Brotherhood, The Third Generation Computer Lib (Nelson), Revolt in 2100, Every Man a God, Every Man a God, Woz Computer Power and Human Reason (Weizenbaum), Life Computerland, Secrets Computers, effect on

Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext

by Belinda Barnet · 14 Jul 2013 · 193pp · 19,478 words

that might define hypertext as an historical artefact, however. Nelson’s next definition of hypertext is more useful for our purposes. In his 1974 book, Computer Lib/Dream Machines (the copy I refer to here is the 1987 reprint), Nelson proposed a definition of hypertext that emphasized branching or responding text – text

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have attempted to realize Nelson’s conception of stretch-text, it has not gained mass adoption like the ‘chunk-style’ hypertext Nelson also identified in Computer Lib/Dream Machines; chunk-style hypertext consists of modular units of text or media connected by links (like most websites). As Wardrip-Fruin wrote in a

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of the hypertext systems we investigate here has a different interpretation of what that means. As Ted Nelson has said in numerous places (first in Computer Lib, and also to me in 2011), ‘Everyone who builds software is projecting the back of their mind into that software’ (Nelson 2011). Everyone’s conception

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digital network that utilized the computer not as a calculating machine, but as a machine to boost human thought – or as Nelson puts it in Computer Lib (1987), a ‘thinkertoy’. Nelson had also been thinking about incorporating a pointing device of some kind for several years before he saw NLS, but the

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that the navy had a few distractions at this time (2012). 5 Nelson writes in response: ‘as a self-publisher working on my kitchen table (Computer Lib, Literary Machines) I couldn’t afford it. I hear Microsoft Word does it automatically, but I had no time for that in Possiplex, even though

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. . 1968. ‘Hypertext Implementation Notes, 6–10 March 1968’. Xuarchives. Online: http://xanadu.com/REF%20XUarchive%20SET%2003.11.06/hin68.tif (accessed June 2012). . 1987. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Redmond: Microsoft Press. . 1991. ‘As We Will Think’. In From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine, edited by James

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, 111 Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice (van Dam et al.) 91, 97 computer-human interaction paradigm 31 computer languages 2, 58, 95, 123, 135, 147n16 Computer Lib 78 Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Nelson) 6–7 computers 50, 97, 146n6 (chap. 6) INDEX ‘Computers, Creativity and the Nature of the Written Word’ 73, 73 computer

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara · 8 Jul 2019

up with a nonlinear system for organizing writing and reading he called “hypertext.” In 1974, he applied the concept in a self-published book titled Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers NOW! (Flip the volume over, and there was a second book, Dream Machines, which talked about computers as media

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build computers that could be understood by ordinary people. Released into the world as Richard Nixon was helicoptering away from the White House in disgrace, Computer Lib made clear who the enemies were. “Deep and widespread computer systems would be tempting to two dangerous parties, ‘organized crime’ and the Executive Branch of

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to simple traffic rules.”11 The expansive optimism of “convivial cybernetics” that Lee Felsenstein outlined in 1974—just like Ted Nelson’s bold declarations of “computer lib” that same year—burned brightly among the community of programmers and social reformers, even as the grandest hopes of the counterculture ebbed. The good vibes

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was called Lotus Development Corporation. Tech had been blowing Mitch Kapor’s mind ever since he’d picked up a copy of Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib soon after graduating from college in the early 1970s. It wasn’t the programming that drew him in—by his own admission, he was only

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Computer Company launched in 1972 on its crusade to demystify computing. In its third volume, a two-page spread promoted Ted Nelson’s newly released Computer Lib. Ed Zschau (left) chats with Wisconsin Republican Rep. Bill Steiger (right), sponsor of 1978 legislation that slashed tax rates and encouraged venture investment. Master marketer

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, http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/peoples-computer/peoples-1972-oct/index.html, archived at https://perma.cc/57DQ-L4FW. 15. Theodor H. (Ted) Nelson, Computer Lib (independently published, 1974; reprinted by Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1987), 30; Andreas Kitzmann, “Pioneer Spirits and the Lure of Technology: Vannevar Bush’s Desk

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(CDA), 329–30, 347 Community Memory, 118, 131, 257, 258, 369 Compaq Computer, 189, 240 Compton, Karl, 70 CompuServe, 63, 255, 257–59, 287, 306 Computer Lib (Nelson), 119, 240 Computermania, 140 Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), 248, 300 Computers and Society, 123 Contract with America, 325 Control Data Corporation, 118

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

by Fred Turner · 31 Aug 2006 · 339pp · 57,031 words

computing such as Lee Felsenstein, Bob Albrecht, and Ted Nelson, a programmer who had authored a volume loosely based on the Whole Earth Catalog entitled Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now. For this generation, Levy suggested, computing was a form of political rebellion. Computers may have always been large

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took advantage of the Whole Earth Catalog in this way was Ted Nelson. In 1974 he modeled his much-cited Computer Lib: You Must Understand Computers Now! after the Catalog. See Nelson, Computer Lib; Dream Machines, 6. 24. Felsenstein, interview, July 18, 2001. 25. Brand, “Spacewar,” 56; Colstad, “Community Memory”; Lipkin, “Public Information Network

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: Knopf, 1995. ———. “Being Digital—A Book (P)review.” Wired, February 1995. Nelson, Theodor H. Computer Lib; Dream Machines. Rev. ed. Redmond, WA: Tempus Books, 1987. ———. Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now. Chicago: Nelson, 1974. Reprint in Nelson, Computer Lib; Dream Machines. Norman, Gurney. “On Heroes.” In Smith and Hershey, Whole Earth Catalog One

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(NSF), 213 Native Americans, as symbolic ﬁgures of authenticity and alternative community, 59 Negroponte, Nicholas, 1, 163, 177, 211 Nelson, Ted, 136, 138, 211, 275n23; Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now, 133 neobiological civilization, 194 Netscape, 213 –14 Netview (magazine), 191 networked computing: cyberspace, and telecommunications, 162; integration of

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer

by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger · 19 Oct 2014 · 459pp · 140,010 words

. This, in turn, inspired actress Celeste Holm’s son Ted Nelson to write a book similar in spirit but about access to computers. Nelson’s Computer Lib proclaimed, well before the Altair was announced, “You can and must understand computers NOW!” Nelson was the Tom Paine and his book the Common Sense

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Big Brother and the Holding Company was a company. * * * Figure 29. Computer Lib and Dream Machines “You can and must understand computers NOW,” Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib proclaimed. To Homebrewers it was the manifesto of the revolution. The second half of Computer Lib was printed upside down and had its own front cover. (Courtesy of

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never paid, and others worked for little. The 1960s values that pervaded the company exalted accomplishing something worthwhile beyond attaining money, power, or prestige. If Computer Lib had the most revolutionary philosophy and the most brilliantly original ideas, PCC had solid, practical advice for people who wanted to learn more about computers

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in the MITS news organ Computer Notes. By the time the event took place in March, several hundred people turned out. Among the speakers was Computer Lib author Ted Nelson, who delivered a scandalous and wildly entertaining speech on what he called “psycho-acoustic dildonics.” Lee Felsenstein (of Homebrew Computer Club, Community

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around checking out other machines. All in all, the Computer Faire was a big success for Apple. Everyone seemed to like the Apple II, although Computer Lib author Ted Nelson complained that it displayed only uppercase letters. Woz couldn’t resist playing one of his practical jokes. MITS was absent from the

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of it had been at least in part about community. This online community, which Ted Nelson had called “the future intellectual home of mankind” in Computer Lib, Lee Felsenstein was working to build through projects like Community Memory. Later, online systems such as CompuServe and AOL succeeded because they provided that sense

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

by Brian Dear · 14 Jun 2017 · 708pp · 223,211 words

Xanadu work he’s written numerous books, perhaps the most famous of which are a pair he self-published in 1974 in a single volume: Computer Lib and Dream Machines. To this day the twin books continue to be essential reading. Nelson understood the computer revolution before most people knew what computers

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nuggets of insight can be gleaned by leafing through their pages. The books summarized both what Nelson felt the general public should know about computers (Computer Lib’s cover boldly declared, “You can and must understand computers NOW”) as well as his travels across the country to discover what was going on

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. Praeger, 1962. Nelson, C. C., B. J. Hughes, and R. E. Virgo. “CAI Applications in Statics.” Engineering Education, November 1986, 96–100. Nelson, T. H. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1987. Noble, D. D. “Mad Rushes into the Future: The Overselling of Educational Technology.” Educational Leadership 54(3), 1996

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: Bloomsbury USA, 2015, 95. Springer, P. G. “PLATO’s Retreatists: The Sordid World of the Computer Addict.” High Times, January 1984, 44. Nelson, T. H. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1987, 13. 11. Impeachment Interview Sources Author’s Interviews: Donald Bitzer (1996); Blomme (1986); B. and M. Fortner (1997

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, S-5. Metcalfe, Bob. “Metcalfe’s Law: A Network Becomes More Valuable as It Reaches More Users.” Infoworld 17(40), October 2, 1995, 53. Nelson. Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 93–95. Pesman, C. “PLATO Games People Play.” DI, September 20, 1975, S-2, S-3. Rheingold. Virtual Community. Springer, P. G. “PLATO

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), May 5, 40–52. Melton, M. PLATO Co-inventor Seeks Sidewalk Computers.” Urbana Courier, February 21, 1977. Nader and Taylor. Big Boys, 449–503. Nelson. Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 93–95. Pantages, A. “Control Data’s Education Offering: ‘Plato Would Have Enjoyed PLATO.’ ” Datamation, May 1976, 183, 186–87. “PLATO to Go

A People’s History of Computing in the United States

by Joy Lisi Rankin

putting BASIC on its machines and by publishing educational materials, including the clever Huntington Project simulations, that showcased BASIC. In his popular manifesto Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now, Ted Nelson urged p eople about BASIC , “If you have the chance to learn it, by all means

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it continued to be profitable into the 1990s.68 One notable exception: in his widely popular 1974 work on computing for the p eople, Computer Lib / Dream Machines, Ted Nelson tipped his hat to GE , acknowledging its provision of interactive computing centers across the United States and Europe.69 What

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. 136. Beverly Hunter, Learning Alternatives in U.S. Education: Where Student and Computer Meet (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1975). 137. Theodor H. Nelson, Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now / Dream Machines: New Freedoms through Computer Screens—a Minority Report (Chicago: Nelson, 1974), 16–17; emphasis in original

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Industry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 68. Lee, “The Rise and Fall of the General Electric Corporation Computer Department,” 44. 69. Theodor H. Nelson, Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now / Dream Machines: New Freedoms through Computer Screens—a Minority Report (Chicago: Nelson, 1974). 70. John Kopf, “ TYMNET as

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the Southern Minnesota School Computer Project, Presented in Foundations of Secondary Education 6353.” Master’s thesis, Mankato (Minnesota) State College, 1971. Nelson, Theodor H. Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now / Dream Machines: New Freedoms through Computer Screens—a Minority Report. Chicago: Nelson, 1974. Nielsen, Norman R. “The Merit