Xanadu
Context
Maggie Appleton:
"Xanadu was a hypothetical hypertext system.
It’s hard to read the word hypertext in 20215ya and not believe its synonymous with the system Tim Berners-Lee built in 198937ya – the World Wide Web that became so much more than linked text on digital screens. The version of hypertext you are reading this on is the only hypertext most of us have ever known.
And yet the idea of hypertext predates Berners-Lee by two decades. The term was coined in 196363ya by none other than Ted Nelson as part of a much larger vision; one small brick in the grand Xanadu dream mansion. While Nelson coined the word, the notion of linked documents goes back to Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths” in 194185ya and Vannevar Bush’s Memex machine in 194581ya – both significant, named influences for Nelson.
To talk about Xanadu, we need to put a pin in our current understanding of hypertext. Our preconceived notions of what a link is, how it works, and what digital text is capable of threatens to overwrite the alternate history we’re about to explore.
Ted hoped Xanadu would be a medium for “ serious electronic literature ” – a paradigm shift that would free us from the material constraints of paper. His vision was the first to meaningfully consider how storing information in digital bits could reconfigure the way we read, write, cite, and share words."
(https://maggieappleton.com/xanadu-patterns)
Characteristics
Xanadu as a Pattern Language
Maggie Appleton:
"Pattern Languages are sets of flexible, reusable solutions to common design problems.
They come from the land of architects: the software developers of the material world. Namely, the architect Christopher Alexander , whose philosophy of constructing vibrant and humane living space escaped the confines of urban planning and infused the world of software design in the late 1980’s.
In their book A Pattern Language , Alexander defined 253 architectural patterns for designing cities, towns, and homes. These became the example patterns for writing patterns. Each one is composed of a context, problem, example, and solution.
Taken as a collection of design patterns, Xanadu’s documentation suggests solutions to some of the hypertextual problems we’re wrestling with today;
- How do we structure information and build relationships between pieces of data that help us see them across contexts, and clarify understanding?
- How do we build systems that allow people to collaborate on shared documents without losing authorship? How do we credit and compensate authors based on their contributions?
- How do we bring ideas and data from a variety of sources into conversation with our own, while leaving a clear trail back to the origin?
Xanadu became a sad parable, when it should have been a piece of speculative design. A set of seeds scattered into the wind for other people to pick up and plant, rather than the patent-happy industrial farming conglomerate it tried to grow into.
Curiously enough, there appear to be rogue seedlings sprouting around the web. A number of Xanadu’s design patterns are showing up in modern manifestations. We’re finding ways to backwards engineer the original spirit of Xanadu into the existing structures of the World Wide Web."