Corpora: ILASH seminar - Ted Nelson

[Ekaterini Pastra]

Dear all,

The Institute for Language, Speech and Hearing celebrates its 2001
Annual Day
with a talk by Professor Ted Nelson. Everybody is welcome to attend this
event.
More information and a poster of the event can be found at:
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Seminars/index.html

Prof. Ted Nelson
Friday, 07 December 2001
11:00a.m.
Room G22, Regent Court,
Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
211 Portobello Street, Sheffield.


"Ideas, the Final Frontier
--  Computers Beyond Hierarchy and the Web beyond HTML -- "

"Most uses of computers simulate either hierarchy, paper, or both
(Acrobat
and the Web).  Hierarchy is notably unsuited to most human thought,
creativity, and ongoing changes of projects; paper is a form of
confinement
to which we have adapted for two millennia, though the ideas have tried
to
escape for a thousand years-- through footnotes, annotations,
parallelisms,
and creative layout.
    If we dare to challenge these traditions, the alternatives still
need
structuring for implementation.  The issue is the optimal representation
of
ideas-- what relations among discrete structures can best replace
hierarchical directories, and what generalizations of electronic
document
will allow profuse bi-directional connections, track content flow from
version to version, allow publishing of annotations and ongoing parallel

documents, and permit large-scale quotation of copyrighted material?
(All are vital for a true electronic literature.)
    The alternatives Ted proposes are simple, straightforward, and
deeply
different from the prevailing paradigms.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ted Nelson is a Project Professor at Keio University in Fujisawa, Japan.

"From October 1960, Ted firmly predicted the era of
 personal computing and mass marketed software
 as a direct extrapolation of early CRT based computers,
 (such as the PDP-1 of that year); the universal migration
 of work to computer screens; interactive media based on
 personal computers, generalizing writing and movies
 as we already knew them; and populist world-wide
 uncontrollable anarchic hypertext based also on personal
 computers, both as distributed small servers and as
 mass market clients.
     He did not make these predictions diplomatically,
 so that many who heard him were enraged at the time
 and do not like to remember or acknowledge now that
 he said all these things that early.  (Indeed, very little
 that he said was actually comprehended.)
     In his software designs he has always urged breaking away
 from the paper model, rather than imitating paper--
 but since the Xerox PARC interfaces were popularized
 in 1984 as the Macintosh, computers have been made
 to imitate paper.  This is rather like the way that trained
 animals are made to imitate people, because it makes
 people feel comfortable, unthreatened and smug.
     Ted has always had a complete general design for a
 complete general alternative world of software, based on
 parallel documents, deep interconnection, side-by-side
 intercomparison and swooping high performance,
 massive rearrangement with origins showing, and new
 forms of copyright permission and micropayment.
 The details of this vision and design have continually
 changed, but the ideas have stayed the same.  These
 designs have been generally considered ignorant, silly,
 bizarre, too radical, unimaginable, impossible, deranged,
 delirious, insane and crazed.
 Until now."


Best,
Katerina Pastra
--------------------------------------------------------------
Katerina Pastra
Research Assistant - ILASH Research Co-ordinator
Natural Language Processing Group
Department of Computer Science
University of Sheffield
Tel. +44 114 2221945
Fax +44 114 2221810
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~katerina