Ted Nelson is a man who foresaw the future of the internet long before it came into being. He introduced the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia,” which became the foundation of the World Wide Web. However, the internet we use today is but a pale and distorted shadow of the philosopher’s original vision.
Nelson dreamed of a decentralized universe of knowledge, but instead, we have a centralized network plagued with broken links and plagiarism. In the latest episode of “Silicon Tanks,” ForkLog explores why the ideas of this American visionary are more relevant today than ever.
Who is Ted Nelson?
Theodor Holm Nelson is not just an IT pioneer. He is a philosopher and sociologist who viewed computers not as calculators but as tools to expand human intellect and culture.
The future philosopher was born in 1937 to actress Celeste Holm and director Ralph Nelson. Nelson’s childhood was spent behind the scenes of Hollywood and Broadway, which, he says, helped him see the world as a complex system of interconnected stories and settings.
In 1960, when computers occupied entire rooms and worked with punch cards, he was already contemplating a global information network for everyone.
Nelson was not a programmer in the traditional sense. He was an architect of ideas. His main goal was to create a system that organically reflected the non-linear nature of human thought. We do not think in order, from “A” to “Z”: our thoughts leap, create associations, and return to old ideas. Nelson wanted computers to work the same way.
It was from this philosophy that the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia” were born. For Nelson, it was not just about clicking on a blue link. It was a way to connect all the world’s literature, science, and art into a single, ever-growing web of knowledge.
Project Xanadu: The Internet We Lost
Nelson’s ideas were embodied in the Xanadu project—his magnum opus. It was not just a system, but an entire philosophy, a global repository of all human written information. Xanadu was meant to be a unified network where every document was linked to others. The project was announced in 1960, long before the advent of ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet.
Technically and ideologically, Xanadu was the complete opposite of what Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web (WWW) became.
Key Principles of Xanadu
In the modern internet, a link is a one-way street. Document A can link to B, but the latter “does not know” about it. If the owner of B deletes it or changes the address, the link in A becomes broken. This is the main cause of information erosion on the web.
In Xanadu, all links were bidirectional and unbreakable. If A linked to B, then B automatically linked back to A. It was impossible to delete or move a document without leaving a trace. The system ensured that no link would ever break, maintaining the integrity and preservation of context.
Transclusion was one of Nelson’s most revolutionary ideas. Instead of copying and pasting a quote from one document to another, Xanadu allowed the “inclusion” of the original fragment directly. The user saw the quote as part of the new text, but it was actually a “live” fragment of the original, loaded from the source.
This solved several problems at once. First, plagiarism disappeared. It was impossible to pass off someone else’s text as your own, as it always remained linked to the author. Second, context was preserved. The user could at any time go to the full original of the quote and see the environment in which it was used. Third, if the author of the original made edits, they were automatically reflected in all documents where transclusion was used.
Permanent versioning—every document in Xanadu had a complete and unchangeable history of all its versions. It was impossible to delete anything irretrievably. The system stored every change, allowing comparison of different states of the document and tracking its evolution. In essence, this resembles the version control system Git or even the principles of blockchain, where every new entry remains in history forever.
Nelson developed a system that automatically rewarded authors. Every time someone viewed a document or its fragment through transclusion, a tiny fraction of a cent (a micropayment) was automatically sent to the content owner’s account. This was an elegant business model built into the very architecture of the network. It encouraged quoting and using others’ works, making the process beneficial for all participants.
Why Does Nelson Criticize the Modern Web?
When Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web appeared in 1990, it quickly gained popularity due to its simplicity. But for Nelson, such simplicity was destructive. He calls HTML “hypertext for dummies,” which distorted his original concept.
Nelson’s main criticisms of the WWW:
- one-way links create chaos and dead pages (404);
- the absence of transclusion led to a culture of copy-paste, copyright infringement, and loss of connection to the source;
- the advertising model instead of micropayments turned users into products, not clients;
- web pages mimic paper documents, although digital space allows for much more complex and interconnected structures.
“HTML is exactly what we fought against: constantly breaking links, quotes without sources, lack of version control and copyright,” Nelson wrote in his book Literary Machines (1980).
Nelson’s Legacy in 2025: From Web3 to NFT
Nelson’s ideas, which seemed too complex and utopian in the 20th century, are experiencing a renaissance today. The concepts underlying Xanadu are remarkably in tune with the principles of decentralized technologies:
- immutability and transparent transaction history in blockchain—the realization of Nelson’s dream of a system where information cannot be secretly changed or deleted;
- non-fungible tokens solve the problem of confirming ownership of a digital object—this is a step towards the idea of transclusion, where the author retains control over the work;
- smart contracts and royalties—automatic payments to authors when NFTs are resold—are a direct embodiment of Xanadu’s micropayment system.
In Conclusion
Nelson is not just the inventor of the term “hypertext.” He is a visionary who saw the potential and risks of the digital world long before its widespread adoption.
His Xanadu project could not compete with the simple and pragmatic WWW, but it became the intellectual foundation for the next generation of the internet.
Perhaps the battle for the future of the web is not over, and the principles of Xanadu—integrity, context, ownership, and fairness—will find their embodiment in the next generation of the internet.