[I arrived late]

William Bricken, HITLab...

...describing 3 dimensional representation of math: each letter
is a labeled box in diagram below, and gravity is in effect so
'a' is on 'x':

        a       b               a       b
        x       x       =       xxxxxxxxx (distributive law: ax + bx = x(a + b)

When you have a void and you mark it, you fundamentally deny it.
My impression is that the above remarks were part of a description
of the underpinnings and generality of the HITL VEOS operating
system. I was so impressed and half-awake that my notes are useless.

Theodor Holm Nelson, Project Xanadu founder...

Chafes against lag in acceptance/implementation of useful ideas.
"{*filter*}y grudge" against Whole Earth Review: claimed he invented the
word 'hypertext' 10 years ago - it was 25 years ago. 4 millenial
cults in compsci: 1) AI (less so since their get-rich-quick program
failed)  2) nano-cryonic libertarians  3) VR  4) Xanadu.  VR's
escalation of extravagant claims in press: we will be born, live and
die in {*filter*}space; promised land as virtualities. At age 14, dayglo
seemed like it would make the world better. Orson Welles maybe the
best media person since Leonardo. At age 20 was doing 20 shows a day
on radio; at 21 had 2 hits on Broadway & own theater; at 25 went to
Hollywood - did he go to film school, no he WAS film school, he made
Citizen Kane... ... No simulation is objective. In the 90's there is
an illusion of no point of view, as if we always see what's there.
Alpha Xanadu about to ship (Autodesk). Literature is a brilliantly
debugged system for containing many points of view. CD-ROM has a pre-
Columbian view of the universe - when you get to the edge you fall off.
True electronic publishing = online access to everything: text, movies..
Xanadu the poem: a symbol of philistine interruption [the author of the
poem Xanadu was interrupted in the middle & forgot the rest]. 1st stage
of release of Xanadu is as an office system; later, servers on the
economic scale of a McDonald's franchise would make open hypertext
publishing possible. New word: TRANSCLUSIONS has something to do w/
the way that quotations in Xanadu hypertext are not copied, just pointed
to in the original so billing for original author takes place on access.
Applications need to be built on top of Xanadu. Gibson's defn of
{*filter*}space as consensual hallucination also applies to football,
California and marriage. News and religion simulate reality. The
drabber novels of the 30's & 40's exhort, "see reality." New words
are new goggles & vice versa. A term: goggle roving. Difference
between VR & multimedia ~ word processing & desktop publishing.
On idiotic arketing terms:

        I do not concern myself with inane distinctions
        that have no bearing on what I want to do. *

Defn of a paradigm: an idea too big to get thru the door; a whole
way of thinking. Paradigm confrontation: when the person who disagrees
with you is totally in your face and they are so clearly misinformed.
Human condition = status, territory and paradigm. Territory = defensible
resources [like this transcript :-)], ideally contiguous.. Paradigm is
the coordinate space defining the territory.

Question session: On Brenda Laurel: agree on content, but she has this
thing about Aristotle - Aristotle, like God, is welcome to his own opinion.
Xanadu involves a charge scheme so the following of the hypertext links
through culture will cause billing to occur; eventually auditable. Big
publishers will turn on a dime if it catches on; others will see it as
an opportunity [anyone could publish if they paid for it, & it would be
cheap..] ... It's just a data supply mechanism w/ no compatible software.
...goggles of the stampeding {*filter*}space people... Hard to adapt to but
no alternative - [I think because w/ more info in incompatible forms it
gets harder & harder to find stuff].

*[cf Baron von Munchausen to the effect of: "your 'reality', sir, is
[balderdash] and I am happy to say that I have no contact with it whatsoever!"