Recently, @ned the CEO of Steemit Inc. changed the location listed on his profile from "A vision in a dream." to something else, but what is the significance of "A vision in a dream."?
After an opium-influnced night in 1797 the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed a poem titled "Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" in which he describes Xanadu, the summer palace of the Chinese Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan
https://web.archive.org/web/20170709233230/steemit.com/@ned
So why does it matter that @ned makes reference to Xanadu? Ted Nelson is the man who coined the word Hypertext and he's been working on Project Xanadu since 1960. It's mission statement is clear: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents." Watch the video from 2013 below to hear Ted talk about his visionary brainchild.
This may not look a lot like Steemit in its current form, but when you compare it's accomplishments to the original 17 rules of Xanadu, the picture becomes strikingly clear.
Original 17 rules
- Every Xanadu server is uniquely and securely identified.
☑ STEEM witness servers satisfy this rule. - Every Xanadu server can be operated independently or in a network.
☑ STEEM is open source and anyone can run it independently. - Every user is uniquely and securely identified.
☑ This is true of STEEM. - Every user can search, retrieve, create and store documents.
☑ Yup - Every document can consist of any number of parts each of which may be of any data type.
☑ Check. - Every document can contain links of any type including virtual copies ("transclusions") to any other document in the system accessible to its owner.
☑ Pretty much. - Links are visible and can be followed from all endpoints.
☑ Yes - Permission to link to a document is explicitly granted by the act of publication.
☐ STEEM does not have this rule satisfied. - Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document.
☐ STEEM does not have this rule satisfied, but hopefully will in the future. - Every document is uniquely and securely identified.
☑ Definitely. - Every document can have secure access controls.
☐ STEEM does not have this rule satisfied, but hopefully will in the future. However, nothing stops you from posting encrypted information to the blockchain. - Every document can be rapidly searched, stored and retrieved without user knowledge of where it is physically stored.
☑ We got this covered. - Every document is automatically moved to physical storage appropriate to its frequency of access from any given location.
☐ This would be a nice feature. - Every document is automatically stored redundantly to maintain availability even in case of a disaster.
☑ Blockchain FTW! - Every Xanadu service provider can charge their users at any rate they choose for the storage, retrieval and publishing of documents.
☑ True in a way. - Every transaction is secure and auditable only by the parties to that transaction.
☐ Blockchain is publicly auditable. - The Xanadu client–server communication protocol is an openly published standard. Third-party software development and integration is encouraged.
☑ STEEM is open source.
12 out of 17 isn't bad and is definitely enough to make me suspect this isn't coincidence. Now let's checkout a Javascript version of Xanadu Space released a few years ago found here: http://xanadu.com/xanademos/MoeJusteOrigins.html
I've found a tutorial on github written by ldodds titled "How to make your own Xanadu demo" and it looks pretty easy. Adopting it to becoming a STEEM front end wouldn't be to bad of a task for the right developer. I see no problem with inserting "Xanalinks" into posts and having the custom front end display them in full Xanadu Docuverse glory. Finally we can be free from the constraints of paper that have held back the human imagination for a millennium!
If any of this intrigues you and you'd like to work on making it a reality please feel free to contact me! I also think I should contact Ted Nelson and see if we can get him on Steemit. I think he'd love it!
I'll leave you with some links for further reading and research:
http://xanadu.com/
http://hyperland.net/
http://alph.io/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/
https://web.archive.org/web/19970507103350/http://www.datamation.com:80/PlugIn/issues/bestof/xanadu.html
Im glad i went over that wikipedia post and found those 17 rules! i wonder if anyone else was keeping track of that!
Lemme get a shoutout man! for discovering the 17 rules with you! I need the street cred!
NICE bro you got Upvotes from @transisto @thejohalfiles @busy.org @gtg @rok-sivante @inertia @timcliff @gentlebot and so many more dolphins and whales here daaaang did you already have them following you?? or did you just get their attention by potiong this under #steemdev and #busy ???
DANG I KNEW i should have made a post like this or at least going over the 17 Rules that we actually now adhere to! I thought I had included these 17 rules in a post already but I didnt and this goes to show you that you always have to post those interesting things AS they happen, which can feel like a lot, because usually when it rains it pours and all these interesting developments seem to happen all at once! Sometime's its just a challenge getting everything compiled into just an OUTLINE! Im glad we have somewhere to start and project xanadu can become a great way to present steem as a project MUCH older than a year old.. we can now claim steem is the fruition of half a century of planing XD hahaha
But seriously, maybe now we can get al those old IBM and Xerox workers and old software engineers to come look at steem and maybe we can get some of them to Invst in steempower! It's like we gave them everything they asked for and on a silvr platter ready for them to eat! I think they will be sold easily on the ideaof buying Steempower to get your stake in the next internet... and that cryp[to currency was the missing puzzle pice with project xanadu... the missing INCENTIVE to even USE such a system! Before cryptocurrency to pay users youd be in a competuition fwith classical world wide web hypertext and the "dead paper" internet ... now that we have Cryptocurrency we can start ovr! its probobly our LAST chance to start over! Its like a Huirricane comes and wipes out your Factory and now its your once in a lifetime chance to retool! This is what Steem isdoing for the inetrnet as a whole!
8 exists through the chain being public.
Sad learning how this story ends.
The Rush version is even sadder. I do like the contextual mechanism of Xanadu. I make do with multiple tabs, but that's far more unwieldy.
Well, I'd think they would update the idea after so long.
I also think when we stop glorifying rule by bullies the panopticon would help the good people.
What would you think if I told you that adept was murdered just after posting that?
I would be very skeptical of an attempt to link that post to his death. He's just advocating better means of handling linking. I don't see how that could create an existential threat to his life. I would also be sad, because it's a good post, and the author likely to provide many more good posts.
Is @adept deceased?
Ackza is the guy to ask.
I got that post from him.
I find it pretty easy to believe that adept was given this info and whoever
gave it to him got mad about his making that public.
But, at this point, my assessment of stinc, et al, is pretty low.
It has occurred to me that dan getting run off and the kneecappening of linear rewards, pay to play, and the loss of the 4 post cap on rewards was intentionally designed to insure that steem crashed.
I no longer believe it was incompetence on ned's part.
If steem had been allowed to flourish with the initial excitement the world would be a different place now, imo.
Great post.....////
Very nice post
Its very educative too. @adept thank you
Close, one day Xanadu, maybe.
Resteem your post to 2000+ followers for only 0.5 SBD or Steem)
Just send 0.5 SBD or steem to @steemvote (URL as memo)
New Followers get 0.001 SBD$ and an upvote for free!!
Just follow @steemvote and...
?
That's so technical
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STOPlets follow each other......
upvote me and I will do the same
Wait we DO have these rules satisfied!
It is tho! Back then "permission" was more serious, iuts so much more leniant now, when u publish to the chain you are givng permission to link to iut or else no one would be getting links to yur post, yes we can give links, i think youre thinking of the definition differently of what they meant but maybe i am wrong i dunno depends on what they meant but it was SO long ago we can kinda set aside some of these rules as they are irrelevant now
But this si EXACTLY what Steem author and curation rewards are!!!
EOS will do this but wait, teem does do this! the data is moved from node to node, people get the physical data on their own computers nowadays! remember i think these rules were written in the 7-s before the storage and recall of data online was very advanced... the had no idea f cloud computing yet... they were still stuck on ",mainframe" computing and using "remote" terminals .. u know how it was back then (even tho we werent around lol)
but yeah also we even have the whole secure acces controls!
well this IS what Posting keys are!! we DO have secure access contrls! only the post author can acess the data necisary to CHANGE the documents! the "source code" i thin is what their talking about acessing here..... BUT yeah if they ARE talking about just literaly being able to view the pages then yeah yorue right, we COULD have a great private posts feature where you need a special key just to VIEW the data! would be awesome! or pay to view pay per view posting LOL or that REALLY good blogging! so good theres a pay wall! lol
but yeah im just kinda bending the meanings to fit my own needs to make steemit seem liek we fit the critereon heh i see that now, im making it fit my needs but its just semantics, we shoudl ask WHY those rules are even imporant i can see why moist of them still are some may become irrelevant nowadays
But yeh this is interesting amazing stuff!
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STOPIsn't more true of EOS?
Would EOS fit more requirements?
Ancient knowledge brought to the forefront and now manifesting. Adept you caught on to something huge. Another piece to the puzzle to be fit in place. Keep cracking codes my man.
Image courtesy of http://www.flavorandfortune.com/dataaccess/article.php?ID=877
Fascinating, many thanks @freebornangel for the link to this post. @ned and his "vision in a dream" or Xanadu protocol for Steemit, sounds very curious. Tragic to hear the author of this post died soon after. I wonder how?
https://scribe.hivekings.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeakd.com%2Fsteemdev%2F%40adept%2Fwill-steemit-complete-project-xanadu-s-vision-of-what-the-internet-should-be
In case you wanted to see what was edited.
damn, looks like that one was taken down or something
Yeah, that does look like an old link.
If you are on peakd you can look in versions or if you are on ecency just append ?history, iirc.