Code and Critique: Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu and the Politics of New Media

Stevens, Hallam

Abstract

The history of hypertext has been dominated by the history of the World Wide Web. However, the inventor of hypertext, Theodor Nelson, has long viewed the web as a deeply problematic implementation of his ideas and advocated for his own hypertext system known as Project Xanadu. This essay situates Xanadu against a background of changing ideas about media and text in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on close reading of Nelson’s work, this essay shows how Xanadu was an instance of the kind of media structure that Nelson saw as most liberating and empowering.

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Osiris

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1933-8287

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History of Science Society

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DOI

10.1086/725144