Project Xanadu's Unreadable UI: A Vision That Never Worked
Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight
Attending a 50th-anniversary party for Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Gwern reflects on why Project Xanadu failed. Despite romanticizing early computing, he argues that the real issue wasn't hardware constraints or team incompetence but the core concept: side-by-side range transclusions are a solution in search of a problem. The UI, famously demonstrated with Genesis text zig-zagging across the screen, was 'completely unreadable.' Most text doesn't need such granular commentary, and even film rarely uses spatial juxtaposition. Xanadu's vision, while influential, remained impractical and unadopted.
The whole concept of side-by-side range transclusions is a solution in search of a problem.
- WillAdams
The other books on hardware from this timeframe such as Tracy Kidder's _The Soul of a New Machine_ or Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ or Andy Hertzfeld's _Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made_ (available as: https://folklore.org/0-index.html) are quite striking and forthright in their discussion of hardware limitations and the ingenuity needed to get things done.
The book _CAD History_, available on-line at: https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/introduction has a bit on Xanadu from the Autodesk end of things.
Or, contrast the far more prosaic _Weaving the Web_ by Tim Berners-Lee and esp. take note of compromises such as URL changing from Universal Resource Locator to Uniform Resource Locator.
- gritzko
I always believed that side-by-side diff view is a transclusion interface.
Also, permalinks can work on top of git quite nicely https://replicated.live/blog/link
If git's pack index gets refactored slightly, it can do anything from trigram-indexed search to metadata indexing to hyperlinking both ways across repos. That is actually useful, I use it: https://replicated.live/blog/wiki
CRDT merges are a very incremental and useful upgrade for git https://replicated.live/blog/meta
Xanadu-like functionality is perfectly within reach.
We don't get what we want or what we need. Instead, we move erratically in very small, easy, local steps.
- listingbott
Do you think Xanadu would have had a chance if it had been built with today's technology?