Re: [xanadu] flecks ?????

[Jeff Rush <jrush@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Stuart A Yeates wrote:
> 
> > One area I've wrestled with is the Xanadu idea of royalties.  A central
> > billing system is a threat to privacy.

<snip>

> What's wrong with the current system of libraries ?
> 
> I'm a member of 3 different traditional libraries (a university library and
> two municipal libraries).

I'm unclear on your suggestion.  Are you saying that traditional
libraries are intrinsically more trustworthy than a vendor and that
we should share our reading interests with them and hope they do
not share them?

While I believe many librarians work hard to protect the privacy of
readers, I'm not sure that is universally true, especially in all
countries.


> There's no reason why I couldn't access the docuverse through several points
> of connection, one if/when I'm studying, one if/when I'm looking for a good
> read on a rainy weekend, one if/when I'm looking at stuff I'd rather other
> people didn't see and one if/when I'm publishing documents. Each of these
> could have a different billing mechanism (and level of detail in the billing
> mechanism), different level of anonymity, different collection of locally
> cached documents and an interface with a different emphasis.

Oh absolutely.  Certainly you may maintain multiple accounts, although
with some vendors you must be careful they don't *combine* due to the
common billing information and a mistaken belief they are being more
efficient.  I've seen this occur.


> `Traditional' libraries embody 2500 years of development in the humanities
> (compare that to copyright, which is only ~300 years old). I'd much rather
> drag my libraries into Xanadu than leave them behind. Most of the features of
> them are there for several reasons, some of them economic but many of them
> reflecting the fundamental nature of the text, documents and the social
> structures in which textual communication happens.

I'll have to think about this.  I've not had a close relationship with
libraries in the past.  The City libraries near me have not had the
depth of technical material I desire, plus much of current technology
isn't yet in the stacks of the libraries I frequent.


> Build such
> a system and you'd be surprised at the variety of pornography, hate literature
> and garbage that get pumped in and the number of juristictions that ban Xanadu.

I could be wrong, but I think you'd find Ted Nelson would disagree with
you,
in that one person's garbage is another's treasure and that all such
knowledge
should be retained in some form.  The boundary isn't as sharp as some
would
think.

But yes, focused collections would be more valuable and popular.

> > I wish Ted Nelson and others in the ***HEART*** of the architecture
> > would join in a discussion of how Xanadu is evolving today.  Most of
> > those I talk with are either non-technical Xanadu groupies waiting
> > for the Second Coming or those who think XML/SQL/Java are _the_
> > solution (the Open Hypertext System vision at www.bootstrap.org).
> 
> Anyone whose read Computer Lib / Dream Machines / Literary Machines or any of
> the more recent documents knows that XML/ SQL/ Java are not the second coming.

I was unclear -- they are *two* groups, one re awaiting second coming
and the
other thinking XML/SQL/Java are the answer.  Anyone who has read Ted's
books knows that those technologies cannot fulfill the tremendous scope
of his vision.  They don't scale, de-structure nor have sufficiently
fine granularity of information.

> It is, however, not clear to everyone that the second coming has to be an
> event rather than a slow evolution. Large complex systems evolving from
> slightly smaller systems on a daily basis.
> 
> I've got to admit that a large number of us are hedging our bets and working
> on architecture independent algorithms.

I'm probably just not looking in the right places, but I haven't seem
much talk of Xanadu-based/spinoff technologies at all.  Perhaps it's
taking place in certain journals or at specific conferences.  I'd love
to fine current discussion of the fine points of the Xanadu technology
along with many other arch-independent algorithms of which you speak.
The hyper-tetrahedron Ent data structure is just so far beyond anything
I've read before and the Zig-Zag N-dimensional viewer is so cool.

-Jeff Rush