  
  
  
   A NEW HOME FOR THE MIND        by 
TED NELSON  
     Simplicity almost never happens 
by itself; it must be designed. There 
are  many computer programs for 
dealing with complexity.  
Unfortunately, as a rule,  they 
generate more complexity.  Many 
systems that start out simply, like 
order  processing or invoicing, are 
appallingly complex in their 
full-blown computer  regalia.  As a 
result, many computer people see 
their jobs as the management  
and perpetuation of this complexity.  
     An alternative to this care and 
feeding of ever more complex systems  
based on simplistic frameworks is to 
seek a framework that holds and deals 
with ideas and their relationships in 
their natural form and structure, in  
their full and exact intricacy.  To 
face squarely and early the natural  
implications of a process brings 
simplicity in the long run.  
     A situation where this choice 
can be made is upon us now with the 
arrival  of cheap word processing 
systems.  These machines help create, 
manipulate, and  store people's ideas 
in the form of written documents.  
Many of these  documents relate to 
each other, quoting in part or whole, 
referencing through  footnotes and 
bibliographies, or merely sharing 
similar ideas.  It is often  
necessary to store many copies of one 
document to assure safety from  
accidental deletions, provide a means 
for backtracking through successive  
states of the document, and for 
repeated use by other documents.  
     The safety of documents should 
be taken care of automatically; that 
it is  still a problem shows the low 
state of the art.  Backtracking is an 
important  consideration.  Although 
we do not need to go back through 
previous material  often, we should 
be able to do it right when we do.  
Here is what doing it  right entails: 
     Suppose we create an automatic 
storage system that takes care of  
backtracking automatically.  As a 
user makes changes, they go directly 
into  the storage system, filed 
chronologically.  The user may then 
refer not merely  to the present 
version of a document, but may go 
back in time to any previous  
version.  He must also be able to 
follow a specific section of a 
document back  through time, studying 
its previous states.  We need not go 
into technical  details here, but it 
is obvious that such a system departs 
from conventional  block storage.  It 
would store material in fragments 
under control of a master  directory 
which indexes by time and other 
factors.  
     This same scheme can be expanded 
to handle alternative versions, more  
than one arrangement of the same 
materials, a facility that writers 
and  programmers could certainly use. 
Alternative versions are important in 
many  boiler plate applications, such 
as law and public relations writing, 
where the  same materials are churned 
out repeatedly in different 
arrangements and  variations.  A 
master indexing scheme could greatly 
reduce storage  requirements in these 
applications, and make the relations 
among documents  much clearer.  
    Of course, a facility that holds 
many versions of the same material 
and  allows historical backtracking 
is not terribly useful unless it can 
help  intercompare different versions 
in detail, unless it can show you, 
word for  word, what parts of two 
versions are the same.  
     Lawyers could use this facility 
to compare wordings.  Congressmen 
could  compare different draft 
versions of legislative bills.  
Authors could see what  has happened 
to specific passages in their 
writings between drafts.   Biologists 
and anatomists could compare 
corresponding parts of animals using 
a  graphical database of physiology 
that shows evolving structure.  
    By creating such a capable 
storage system, we have greatly 
simplified the  life of the text 
user.  The nuisance of backup, and 
the spurious nonsense-task  of 
finding names for backup files, is 
eliminated.  More importantly, we 
have  unified all versions (previous 
and alternative) in a single 
structure for  ready reference.  The 
user could scroll through any two 
versions to see  corresponding parts, 
and much more.  
     So far we imagine a new 
reading-and-writing box that behaves 
pretty much  like a high-power word 
processor.  Let us add one more 
facility, links.  
     To begin with, let us think of a 
link as simply an opportunity to jump 
away from some point in the text.  A 
conventional footnote is a good 
example.   An asterisk, say, signals 
that "there's something to jump to 
from here."  If  you point at it with 
your light-pen (or mouse or 
whatever), bingo!-you're now  at the 
footnote, or whatever else the author 
took you to.  If you don't like  it 
there, hit a return button and you're 
back to where the asterisk appeared.  
No harm has been done.                
     This simple facility-call it the 
jumplink capability-leads immediately 
to  all sorts of new text forms: for 
scholarship, for teaching, for 
fiction, for  poetry.                 
     Marginal notes, like those 
scribbled in books, are another 
simple and  important type of link.  
(Where the "margins" of the computer 
screen are-that  is, how to show 
them- is a matter particular to your 
own screen setup.)  
     The link facility gives us much 
more than the attachment of mere odds 
and  ends.  It permits fully 
nonsequential writing.  Writings have 
been sequential  because pages have 
been sequential.  What is the 
alternative?  Why,  
hypertext-nonsequential writing.  
     Many, perhaps most, writers have 
been frustrated by the problem of  
choosing a sequence for the ideas 
they are presenting.  Any sequence is 
generally arbitrary, and what is 
right for one reader may be wrong for 
another.  Indeed, many writers have 
experimented with nonsequential 
forms-one  of my favorites is 
Nabokov's *Pale Fire*-and I think 
such forms have proved  gratifying.  
They are not necessarily easy to work 
with, however.  That is  because 
exiting mechanisms push us toward 
sequency.  Even the best of  
commercial word processors.    
     I have so far presented several 
new capabilities that I think are  
important:  alternative versions and 
historical backtrack, both with 
sameness  display, and links.         
     These work together; they have 
to.  The links allow the creation of  
nonsequential writings and 
jump-structured graphics of many 
kinds.  But if you  were going to 
have links you really need historical 
backtrack and alternative  versions.  
Why?  Because if you make some links 
on Monday and go on making  changes, 
perhaps on Wednesday, you'd like to 
follow those links into an  updated 
version.  They'd better still be 
attached to the right parts, even  
though the parts may have moved.  And 
the sameness display allows the 
complex  linked alternatives to be 
studied and intercomputed in depth.   
     Let us call this Stage One:  a 
system of computer storage that holds 
small pieces of a document, not big 
blocks, and instantly assembles them 
into  any part of whichever version 
you ask for.  That allows you to 
create links of  any kind you want, 
and shows you which parts are the 
same between related  versions.  Let 
us call such a storage system a 
hyperfile.    
     Electronic publishing is coming; 
this much we all agree on.  Just what 
it  will be is not so clear.  For 
some five hundred years the public 
has been  reading from books and 
magazines of paper.  Now all that may 
change.  
     As computer crt screens become 
more and more available, there is 
less and  less reason for printing on 
paper.  The costs of wood pulp and 
gasoline, the  long lead times of 
editorship and production, the 
increasing divergence of  specialized 
interests, and the lowering cost of 
computers with screens, of  disk 
storage, and digital communications, 
all suggest this.   
     Beginning thinkers in this area 
often suppose that what will be 
offered  to the screen reader will be 
merely individual stored documents, 
available  on-line quickly, but based 
somehow on conventional documents 
nestling in  conventional sequential 
computer files.  My view is quite 
different.  
     Consider the hyperfile we just 
finished expounding.  Why can't we 
extend  it into a full publishing 
system?  Once the package allows 
linkage and  backtracking, why not 
extend it?  Why not allow anyone to 
create links between  documents, 
allowing jumps straight from one to 
another?  If documents can be  
reached and used on-line by anyone, 
all we need additionally is the 
ability to  create links among them- 
to make our own bookmarks and 
marginal notes, to  quote from them 
by direct excision.  And why not, 
indeed, allow users to  assemble 
collections of documents into larger 
ones?                                 
     Royalties will have to be paid, 
of course.  Since there is no 
controlling  what happens at the user 
end, this royalty should be 
automatically recorded  and largely 
based on transmission time.  An hour, 
five minute, or one second of  a 
thing, each contribute proportionally 
to the copyright holder's account.  I 
will bypass the question of whether 
different rates of royalty should be  
allowed.  
     The logic of such compound 
documents is simple and derives from 
the  concept of document ownership.  
Every document has an owner.  The 
integrity of  this document is 
maintained; no one may change it but 
the owner.  
     Someone else, however, may 
create a document which quotes it or 
revises  it; this document, too, 
retains its integrity.  That means 
you can  indefinitely create new 
documents from old ones, making 
whatever changes seem  appropriate.  
Originals remain unchanged.      
     What's more, since the copyright 
holder gets an automatic royalty,  
anything may be quoted without 
permission.  That is, publishing 
through such a  net requires implicit 
permission for your work to be quoted 
ad lib.  You  publish something, 
anyone can use it, you always get a 
royalty automatically.   Fair.  
Especially if the reader can always 
say "Show me what this was  
originally."  
    But this means a whole new 
pluralistic publishing form.  If 
anything which  is already published 
can be included in anything newly 
published, any new  viewpoint can be 
fairly presented.  For example, my 
great-grandfather, Edmund  Gale 
Jewett, believed that one word in 
*Hamlet* was incorrect.  It should 
have  been "siege," not "sea of 
troubles," in the well-known 
soliloquy, he thought.  
     Very well.  If *Hamlet* is on 
the system, then E.G. Jewett could 
publish  his own *Hamlet*, very 
easily:  a quote-link to the whole 
original, except for  "sea," which is 
changed to "siege."  
             Now, the obvious rules 
of the road should be  as follows:  
             1.  Shakespeare's 
*Hamlet* is of course unchanged and 
available  instantly.  
             2.  Jewett's modified 
version of *Hamlet*, composed almost  
entirely of the original, is also 
available instantly. Jewett may give 
it any  title he wants.  
             3.  Shakespeare-or 
presumably some Needy Author's 
Fund-gets the  royalties for the 
portion of Shakespeare's *Hamlet* 
summoned by readers.   
             4.  When people read 
Jewett's *Hamlet*, the author's fund 
still  gets the royalty on 
Shakespeare's behalf almost all the 
time.  But Jewett gets  a minute 
proportion of the royalty for the 
change he has made, whenever a  
reader encounters that part.          
             5.  Anyone reading 
Jewett's version can say, "Show me 
the  original of this next to it," or 
just, "Take me to the original."  
             6.  Anyone reading 
Shakespeare's *Hamlet* can say:  
"What  documents have links to this?" 
or "Are there any alternative 
versions?" and  get a list that 
includes Jewett's version.      
     Note also the modest cost to 
Jewett should he "publish" his text:  
the  storage cost for a few hundred 
bytes to hold ID, pointers, and 
changes.  Also,  note that this 
arrangement is fair, orderly, and 
simple.  These seem to me  very 
important features.                   
     The overarching vision I 
propose, then, we might call a 
"hyperworld"-a  vast new realm of 
published text and graphics, all 
available instantly; a  grand library 
that anybody can store anything 
in-and get a royalty for-with  links, 
alternate versions, and backtrack 
available as options to anyone who  
wishes to publish them.  It is a 
world:           
        *whose documents window and 
link freely to one another;   
        *where every quotation may be 
traced instantly, and seen in its  
original context;  
        *where minority 
interpretations and commentary may be 
found  everywhere;  
        *where any point of view 
disagreed with may at once be 
restated "in  the margin, "with only 
minor changes," by any commentator; 
thus good  explanations of everything 
soon become available;    
        *where a collage of parts can 
be assembled by anyone into a new  
unifying vision, but the doubtful 
reader may wander off into a 
constituent  part and not return;  
        *where an article published 
on Wednesday is festooned with  
disagreements by Friday, widely 
windowed the following week, 
forgotten the  next year, 
rediscovered in a decade.             
     Scholarship becomes plied high 
with popularizations.  Good 
quotations,  good diagrams, propagate 
through this electronic literature 
like wildfire, as  everybody uses 
them.  
     The tangle of links will grow.  
Professional indexers will create  
directories of what they think we'll 
want to see, and collect a whiff of  
royalty every time you veer through 
their directory.  (The system must 
not  have an official directory; that 
implies an official set of 
categories-a bias  best left to 
users.)  
     Is this chaos?  Not at all.  
Because at any one time you are 
within one  specific document, the 
work of a specific author.  If this 
work is windowing  to other 
documents, nevertheless you are still 
not "in" the others, but  viewing 
them through the present author's 
textual filter.  
     Think of the present document as 
a sheet of glass.  It may have 
writing  painted on it by the present 
author; it may have windows to 
something else,  but these windows 
may have, as it were, colored 
cellophane or opaquing on  them.  It 
is only when you step through the 
window-which you may do at any  time- 
that you reach the original.  But 
stepping through the window means  
turning one glass page and going on 
to the next.  Now you are in another 
work.    
     Now reconsider what we said 
before about simplicity.  Simplicity 
must be  designed, but it should 
reflect the true inner structure of 
something.  Many  approaches to 
electronic publishing are very 
complicated.  But that can't work  on 
a broad scale:  the word publishing 
itself suggests use by the public.   
Meaning simplicity.  For thousands of 
years we have had a tradition we call 
literature.  Its inner structure has 
been that of documents, each with an  
owner/creator, which quote and refer 
to one another in an ever-growing  
snowball.  All I am proposing here is 
to electronify and hasten access to 
this  very traditional structure but 
with suitable enhancements arising 
from  available software techniques.  
     The result is a seemingly 
anarchic pool of documents, true, but 
that's  what literature has been 
anyhow.  Yet I see this new world as 
orderly in two  ways.  Its 
orderliness is not, as some would 
suppose, imposed by the computer  or 
its administrators, but by something 
which arose long ago in the natural  
structure of literature, and which we 
are merely retaining.  
     One kind of order, order on the 
small scale, is simply the 
distinction  between documents and 
the enforcement of ownership.  You 
know who created  whatever you're 
looking at; despite the staggering 
pluralism, each thing is  kept 
separate and intact because only its 
author, or publisher, controls it.   
No one can ever be misquoted except 
by making a copy, rather than a  
quotation-link, and that can be 
easily recognized as suspicious.      
     The other form of order is the 
long-term orderliness of ideas, which 
is  ever created and re-created by 
commentators, paraphrasers, and 
anthologizers.  
     I see a world where people are 
brought together by the computer, 
rather  than driven apart by 
television.  The computer screen is 
really a very social  instrument.  
Not many people have noticed that the 
crt is an ideal two-person  device.  
Sure, much of the time there's only 
one person at it, but often there  
are two.  And when there are two 
people, the situation is socially  
interesting:  they are usually in a 
colleague relationship.  Two people 
sit,  chat, exchange ideas as they 
browse, decide together what to do 
next.  Bossy  authority does not fit 
well when two people are looking at a 
tube and  chatting.  "Suppose we try 
this," one will say, or, "Let's do 
that."  One may  be officially the 
other's boss or teacher, but the 
relationship is softened,  made more 
sensible and open to ideas from both. 
One moral is that every  computer 
screen should have a jump seat.  As 
crt furniture and mountings are  
better designed, the computer and 
screen will no longer be a stack of 
boxes to  be placed on a wooden desk, 
but an integrated piece  of furniture 
with  suspended tube, coordinated 
work surfaces, and bucket seats.  Or 
rather a  pilot's bucket seat and a 
colleague's less comfortable pullout 
seat.   Kibitzers will have to stand. 
     As explorable graphics and 
simulations are added to our 
hyperworld, the  computer screen will 
be more and more a new kind of shared 
social environment.   I see little 
kids at play in spaceships and far 
galaxies, but with characters  on the 
screen that they've borrowed from 
here and there.  Barbie, the Wizard  
of Oz, Captain Midnight, and Shaft 
can be toys in Eriador or the palace 
of  Ming the Merciless, because 
graphical pieces may be drawn from 
everywhere.   The kids build worlds 
and castles in two-dimensional 
collages, which can  always be there 
when they come back, unlike wooden 
blocks that clutter the  living room.  
Later, as 3D imaging systems like 
CHARGE become available, the  
hyperworld can include 
three-dimensional data-spaces.       
     I see adults who were "afraid of 
science" learning physics at the 
wheel  of a video game, combining one 
author's graphics with another's 
simulations  and still another's 
sound synthesis; where dings and 
roars and acceleration  make the 
ideas come alive.                     
     I see families together again, 
actively sharing.  Imagine a kid and 
her  father browsing through an 
illustrated hypertext:  
     "Gee, daddy, a brontosaurus!  
Let's animate him!"  
     "Like this?"  The father finds 
several animations that have been  
published for this brontosaurus.  
Choosing one, he makes the 
brontosaurus walk  and eat.  
     "I wonder what the bones of the 
dinosaur look like while he's 
walking,"  ruminates the child.  
     Father links to bones while 
maintaining the animation.  Now the 
skeleton  walks inside its outline, 
still munching from trees.  
     "Oh, save that, daddy!"  
     Daddy hits a button and a 
private link is created to the 
original  dinosaur picture, the 
animation frame, and the skeleton-all 
of which may be  brought together 
again, with time and date, when the 
child wants to see her  "dinosaur 
picture."  
     Hey, here we are in *Snow White 
and the Seven Dwarfs*.  A Disney 
vision.   Shall we jump sideways on 
links to older illustrations?  Yikes, 
the 19th  century engravings are too 
sinister.  Let's see if this passage 
has a  corresponding part in the 
Donald Barthelme version.  
     Once we can have full and 
independent linking and windowing, 
scholarship  changes dramatically.  A 
commentator or critic can underline 
precisely what he  is referring to at 
any time, and gather together 
whatever pieces to support  his 
thesis.  Intercomparison and exegesis 
become easier to do and easier to  
follow.  Detailed annotations to 
existing writings may easily be 
published,  anthologies of related 
materials can be easily put together. 
     Perhaps most important, this 
richness and completeness becomes 
available  to students who before 
have had to deal with simplified, 
bowdlerized, and  gutless materials.  
     Consider schools.  From the 
one-room schoolhouse, a cooperative 
endeavor  fostering individual goals 
and abilities in a sharing 
atmosphere, we went to a  
batch-processing system with inane 
fixed curricula, arbitrary and 
meaningless  standards of success, 
and failure (what in the hell does a 
"B" in geometry  mean?), and teaching 
as a platoon-control process.  Human 
mentality, even for  the "well 
educated," has been kept by the 
educational system and popular  
outlook far below the levels we can, 
and ought to, attain.   
     Why is it that schools are by 
their nature boring and oppressive, 
yet  museums, which may cover the 
same subjects, are liberating and 
exciting to the  kids?  The answers 
are fairly simple:  one is dull, the 
other vivid; one is  confining, the 
other is free.              
     Now there ought to be a 
way-there's going to be a way-to 
combine the  freedom of a museum with 
a reasonable criterial system for 
monitoring  achievement.  
     Aside from the merest basics, it 
is not important what you learn, it 
is  important that you learn, and if 
there are a lot of choices then you 
are going  to choose for yourself and 
succeed for yourself; thus you feel 
gratified from  the learning process 
and competent to continue it, and 
those are two outcomes  the schools 
have studiously avoided.    
     How to bring out the excitement, 
controversy, drama, of all the 
world's  subjects, put this in a 
voluntaristic and uncontrolled 
framework, and keep it  orderly?  By 
creating, I think, a whole new 
hyperworld where we fly our crts  
through text and graphics of every 
kind, and a social world built around 
it-  where ideas become important.  
     There are several key problem 
areas.   
     1. Curriculum.  It is 
unfathomable to me, when so little 
education is  cumulative, and when 
adults say over and over that they 
don't remember what  they "learned" 
in school, why curriculum is assumed 
to be of any importance,  thought to 
be anything other than a pointless 
and painful charade.  Nobody  learns 
it anyway; it's simply an 
administrative runaround. 
("Curriculum"  originally meant 
"racetrack.")  
     2."Subjects."  There are no 
"subjects."  Everything is deeply  
intertwingled.  Supposed subjects are 
arbitrary divisions in the infinite  
tapestry of human ideas and concerns. 
The true interconnections of 
knowledge,  as well as the sweeping 
disagreements that make scholarship 
interesting,  should be available to 
students at all levels.               
     3. Personal conflicts.  The 
problems between teacher and student 
of  personality, authority, and 
outlook often swamp whatever else is 
supposed to  be going on.  There has 
got to be a way around this.  
     4. Cognitive style.  Different 
people learn best in different ways, 
and  anything could be taught in any 
style-but much energy is wasted on 
promoting  cognitive style as well.  
     There is a crucial distinction 
between hypertext and computer 
assisted  instruction.  It is simply 
one of freedom.  In computer assisted 
instruction,  the author can lock you 
into a specific situation and there 
you  are-constrained to do the task 
that has been set for you, however 
long it  takes, however oppressive 
and stupid it may be.  And there is 
typically no way  to register a 
disagreement.   
     In compound hypertext, however, 
we retain one of the greatest 
traditions  of Western literature:  
freedom to turn the page or close the 
book.  You are  free to write 
marginalia of disagreement 
anywhere-which everyone else is in  
turn free to ignore.  I believe that 
the rigidity and narrow-mindedness of 
today's computer assisted instruction 
will open out into the freedom of  
hyperworld exploration.     And the 
two-seat hypertext screen may just 
restore  the convivial qualities of 
bygone education and of personal 
tutoring, as the  teacher drops into 
the jump seat at the student's 
computer and makes  suggestions 
rather than gives orders.  
     If there is a published, widely 
pluralistic tapestry of writings on 
all  topics, then each reader, old or 
young, can find the style that best 
suits him  or her for pursuing a 
specific topic.  
     One of the dullest subjects I 
took in school was "history."  It was 
a  tiresome enumeration of names, 
wars and dates with no particular 
meaning.  But  I loved historical 
movies; they had heroes with a 
purpose.  Now in fact  historical 
scholars are often vitally concerned 
with heroes and their  purposes.  How 
do the schools manage to make these 
things dull?           
     Why shouldn't the students have 
access to material that makes the  
motivating controversies, the heroes 
and high spots of history come 
alive-and  then link sideways between 
documents to the more factual 
material?  By what  paths did the 
tribes reach Europe? (What universal 
rules of tribalism are  there, if 
any?)  Was the legend of Valhalla 
really inspired by the Roman  
colosseum?  What really happened 
before the Thera/Atlantis explosion?  
What  did the Tower of Babel look 
like?  
     We can't know, but we can 
conjecture; there is an ever-widening 
tree of  possibilities.  I want to 
explore it, and I'm sure other kids 
would love it  too.  
     Imagine:  Hyper-poetry--collages 
of pieces of text that cleverly  
intertwine, or even rhyme.            
     Hyper-valentines--send a loved 
one a picture with little doors that 
open  into all kinds of wonderful 
places in the hyperworld.  
     Minority voices-every viewpoint 
should be easily heard.  Of course, 
this  does not mean people will 
listen.  But the problem of "media 
coverage," a  chafing-point for 
minorities who feel that their view 
cannot be heard, is in a  sense 
solved.      
     High ideals-what passes for high 
ideals often isn't worth a gumball.  
The  drabness of most computer ideals 
is a downer, like being sprayed with 
wet  concrete:  "New tools for 
management," "Better through-put," 
"Instant file  cards for libraries."  
This is worth pending your life on?  
With word  processing and shoot-'em-up 
arcade games, interactive computing 
and graphics  have at last reached 
The People, and indeed threaten to 
transform society.  But  is this the 
kind of transformation we ought to be 
thinking about?            
     Those of us who grew up 
believing passionately in ideals that 
made our  country great, such as 
liberty and pluralism and the 
accessibility of ideas,  can hardly 
ignore the hope of such an 
opening-out.  Libertarian ideals of  
accessibility and excitement might 
unseat the video narcosis that now 
sits on  our land like a fog.  I want 
to see the writings of Herodotus, 
Nostradamus,  and Matthew Brann as 
accessible as those of Rod McKuen, 
along with the art of  the Renaissance 
and movies of tomorrow--an 
all-encompassing picture-book  
encyclopedia tumult graffiti-land, 
the Whole Works.             
     If this all seems like a wild 
idea, that means you understand it.  
These  are times wild with 
possibility.  In an age of pocket 
calculators, the Pill,  hydrogen 
bombs by rocket, and soap opera by 
satellite, we can try to create  
whatever wildness we want in our 
society.     
     And when the kid start being 
born up in the space colonies-do we 
want  them to lose touch?  Paper's 
too heavy to end up, but hypertext 
might be about  right.     I say thee 
worlds are possible soon.  We need 
them, and they will  make lots of 
money.  The software is on the way.  
But what is really lacking  are the 
visionary artists, writers, 
publishers, and investors who can see 
the  possibilities and help carry 
such ideas into reality.       
 COMPUTOPIA SOON?           by John 
W. Verity  
     Is Xanadu worth waiting for?  
     That depends, doesn't it, on the 
value of the hand-bush differential 
bird  utility ratio.  
     Ted Nelson's idea for a 
hypertext publishing system was 14 
years old when  that Xanadoodle 
appeared in the now classic *Dream 
Machines/Computer Lib*, his  1974 
manifesto for computerdom's 
underground. Now after several years 
of  intensive, meagerly financed 
effort, the wait is over.  Xanadu 
appears to be a  reality.  
     Demonstrations of a limited, 
single-user Xanadu system were slated 
to  begin by early winter as the 
start of a marketing plan that will 
bring the  system before the waiting 
eyes of the many Xanadu followers 
and, it is hoped,  some potential 
customers.  No contracts have been 
signed yet, the system as  envisioned 
by Nelson is far from complete and 
financing continues to be a  problem, 
but the door into the world of Xanadu 
has opened for all to see. Two  
companies, one owning the software 
and another chartered to market it 
under a  nonexclusive license, have 
been set up in Ann Arbor, Mich., the 
site of much  Xanadu activity in 
recent years.  Nelson himself has 
left Swarthmore, Pa., for  San 
Antonio, where he's working on future 
office automation products for  
Datapoint.  He's left the day-to-day 
Xanadu operations to Roger Gregory, 
chief  technician on the project.     
     So far, all that has been 
developed is the Xanadu back end, 
described by  Nelson as a large-scale 
indexing system in which a huge 
number of documents  can be stored, 
linked, and retrieved according to 
parameters submitted to it  by a 
front end.  The latter, a version of 
which was scheduled to be completed  
and shown by press time, will likely 
be up to the user to supply.  It will 
probably be a standard word processor 
or intelligent terminal programmed to 
move messages to the back end and to 
display documents as formatted by the 
user.  Currently, the software is 
written in the C programming language 
running under Unix on a Motorola 
68000-based Onyx desktop computer, 
according  to Gregory.  The group is 
looking for a larger machine, he 
notes.      
     Project Xanadu, Inc., owns the 
system software and will continue  
development of it, Gregory says, 
while Xanadu Operating Co. will look 
for  customers and market the system 
in various forms; licenses for oem 
use of the  software in object code 
form and access to a Xanadu service 
over dial-up and  eventually over 
public network lines are the main 
offering planned.  Also,  custom 
front-end programming will be 
undertaken for those customers not up 
to  doing it themselves, says 
Gregory, noting that front-end work 
may become a  substantial growth path 
once central Xanadu sites are in place. 
He i reluctant to  talk about 
financing, claiming legal restraint, 
but outside venture capital has  not 
been discounted as a future source of 
revenue.  Meanwhile, money is being  
invested by the firms' principal.  
"We're sort of struggling," says 
Project  Xanadu president Gregory, 
noting that much of the development 
effort so far  has been donated.  He 
adds that experienced marketing 
personnel will be  required but 
hiring has been delayed by the money 
situation.  "We know there's  a lot 
more we need. We're going to have to 
get some high-powered business  
help."       
     What makes Xanadu work within 
tolerable processing and real-time 
limits,  Nelson claims, is a new 
method for indexing very large 
numbers of documents  and their 
criss-crossed links and windows.  The 
system manages to maintain and  
navigate through the otherwise 
uncontrollably large number of 
pointer values  using a proprietary 
scheme partially inspired by the 
Dewey Decimal library  system:  an 
accordionlike notation-using numbers, 
"humbers," and  "tumblers"-grows to 
accommodate document link a they are 
made without wasting  space on unused 
values.  In his most recent (1981) 
book, *Literary Machines*,  Nelson 
explains much of the thinking behind 
the Xanadu scheme and delves into  
the potential legal, marketing, and 
philosophical aspects of a full-blown 
Xanadu system.  (The book can be 
obtained from Nelson at P. O. Box 128 
Swarthmore, PA  19081.  Project 
Xanadu's address is P. O. Box 7615 
Ann Arbor,  MI 480107.)  
     Applications for Xanadu are 
expected to be "high end," says 
Gregory, who  cites documentation of 
large-scale engineering or 
programming projects as a  likely 
area.  "We want to sell expensive 
systems at first in order to fund the 
dial-in-services," he notes.  "As 
soon as we can demonstrate the 
system, we  have a long list of 
people to show it to."  He declines 
to name any prospects,  but Bell Labs 
is understood to be an interested 
party.  No contracts have been  
signed as of Feb. 1, 1982, and only a 
single-user front end has been  
developed.  Multi-user versions, 
additional security, and a 
backup/recovery  features are next on 
the development list, he said.  Those 
features are  necessary to sell the 
system to corporate users.       
     In *Literary Machines* Nelson 
says prices for a VAX Xanadu 
installation  for in-house use will 
be in the order of $25,000.  
Front-end development work  will be 
extra, but could be handled by the 
customer.  He also discusses  
collaborating with established 
corporations to run his futuristic 
Silverstands  franchises, similar to 
McDonalds hamburger shops (complete 
with golden Xs to  "welcome the 
mind-hungry traveller") in their 
efficient on-line Xanadu  hookups:  
"We would not mind working with Sony, 
Xerox, Disney, Cromemco,  Storage 
Technology, Apple, Datapoint, BBN, 
Lucas films, American Zoetrope,  
*Whole Earth Catalog*, *Rolling 
Stone*, *Playboy*, McDonald's, or 
Holiday Inn,  to name a few."         
     So far, Nelson claims in 
*Literary Machines*, he has shunned 
financial  support from "a variety of 
shallow creeps who did not share our 
vision."   Thus, Xanadu has been a 
long time coming, even in its current 
no-frills form.   Nelson is quick to 
credit the many Xanadoers who have 
volunteered their time  to the 
effort.  In the meantime, he has 
published some of computing's most  
enlightening and entertaining volumes 
and papers.  His next book, he says,  
will be *Computopia Now!*, "my most 
fulminating and free swinging so 
far." For  many, he epitomizes 
irreverence to the computer 
establishment.  "Aren't you  afraid 
that writing such a flippant book 
will keep people from taking you  
seriously?" he asked himself in 
*Dream Machines*, answering, "I do 
not want to  be taken seriously in 
some quarters until it is too late."  
                                
--John W. Verity 
