5 ms·

Im completely glad Xanadu died. Their grandiose plan was to install microtransactions on EVERYTHING, so that even hitting a simple webpage could be $10 to read

by nekusar 12d ago

Im completely glad Xanadu died. Their grandiose plan was to install microtransactions on EVERYTHING, so that even hitting a simple webpage could be $10 to read. This is the libertarian utopia, where only the rich can read and learn. It would have been the death knell for communication if every word had a bloody pricetag. So good fucking riddance. I hope Xanadu stays in the trash-heap of history.

jonjacky 12d ago
The Xanadu proposal dates from the mid-20th century so it includes a quaint assumption from that era: people expect to be paid for the work they do. What, people are supposed to spend hours typing at a computer for no payment in order to make some billionaire even richer? Who would do that? It's nuts. Yes, if Xanadu had taken off people might have had to pay a little to view its content. Just like we used to pay for books, records, movies, magazines, etc etc etc. It wasn't so bad -- those things were mass entertainment, not just for the rich, and they were certainly not a death knell for communication. I don't know how you came up with $10 to view a web page. When Nelson proposed Xanadu, mass market paperback novels -- hundreds of pages -- cost 50 cents. Kids (like me) could easily afford them. They were cheap because there was a huge market -- so communication could flourish. It's not clear to me we are living in the best of all possible worlds. If the micropayments thing had taken off, it might have provided a way for large numbers of people to make some money by writing, etc. In our world, most of the money is made by a few corporations, and an increasing proportion of what's on the net is slop made by ... nobody.
- nekusar 12d ago
  Can you not think in first, second or third derivative actions with a system that bakes in micropayments at the deepest infrastructure level? Should people be able to get paid for content they made? Sure. But we have that already - copyright. And it's also already so askew to the largest companies. The small folk are ALREADY squeezed out. I could imagine trap Xanadu-pages that whose goal is to charge for garbage. Cents at a time, just under whatever limits you have on the micropayment lever. But a page could drain dollars. And there'd be millions of them. Traps everywhere. Wait, so you can generate garbage content, link it everywhere? Yeah the LLM in a Xanadu system would create billion-page webs that *appear* useful, but whose only goal is 'drain your wallet'. And pages can be generated faster than you can block. Xanadu also completely upends the idea of public domain - republish and start that money counter going! Republish republish republish. Or steal your content, republish, and rake in the microtransactions. Again, I can do it faster than you can catch me. This whole Xanadu garbage is predicated upon the root idea that only monied people should have the right to read and access content. I am glad it is in the dumpster of dead technologies. Frankly, all libertarian extreme technologies need to be destroyed.
- techteach00 12d ago
  Excellent points. When Nelson was building Xanadu in the 60s-80s there was no expectation that the user would be the product. Which we have today, things like Google workspace, Office, YouTube, social media etc letting the user use software for "free" in the sense that their is no visible micro traction but an invisible harvesting of your habits and interests to sell to advertisers or whoever wants to buy it. Nelson simply didn't predict this.

by nekusar 12d ago

jonjacky 12d ago

The Xanadu proposal dates from the mid-20th century so it includes a quaint assumption from that era: people expect to be paid for the work they do. What, people are supposed to spend hours typing at a computer for no payment in order to make some billionaire even richer? Who would do that? It's nuts. Yes, if Xanadu had taken off people might have had to pay a little to view its content. Just like we used to pay for books, records, movies, magazines, etc etc etc. It wasn't so bad -- those things were mass entertainment, not just for the rich, and they were certainly not a death knell for communication. I don't know how you came up with $10 to view a web page. When Nelson proposed Xanadu, mass market paperback novels -- hundreds of pages -- cost 50 cents. Kids (like me) could easily afford them. They were cheap because there was a huge market -- so communication could flourish. It's not clear to me we are living in the best of all possible worlds. If the micropayments thing had taken off, it might have provided a way for large numbers of people to make some money by writing, etc. In our world, most of the money is made by a few corporations, and an increasing proportion of what's on the net is slop made by ... nobody.

nekusar 12d ago
Can you not think in first, second or third derivative actions with a system that bakes in micropayments at the deepest infrastructure level? Should people be able to get paid for content they made? Sure. But we have that already - copyright. And it's also already so askew to the largest companies. The small folk are ALREADY squeezed out. I could imagine trap Xanadu-pages that whose goal is to charge for garbage. Cents at a time, just under whatever limits you have on the micropayment lever. But a page could drain dollars. And there'd be millions of them. Traps everywhere. Wait, so you can generate garbage content, link it everywhere? Yeah the LLM in a Xanadu system would create billion-page webs that *appear* useful, but whose only goal is 'drain your wallet'. And pages can be generated faster than you can block. Xanadu also completely upends the idea of public domain - republish and start that money counter going! Republish republish republish. Or steal your content, republish, and rake in the microtransactions. Again, I can do it faster than you can catch me. This whole Xanadu garbage is predicated upon the root idea that only monied people should have the right to read and access content. I am glad it is in the dumpster of dead technologies. Frankly, all libertarian extreme technologies need to be destroyed.
techteach00 12d ago
Excellent points. When Nelson was building Xanadu in the 60s-80s there was no expectation that the user would be the product. Which we have today, things like Google workspace, Office, YouTube, social media etc letting the user use software for "free" in the sense that their is no visible micro traction but an invisible harvesting of your habits and interests to sell to advertisers or whoever wants to buy it. Nelson simply didn't predict this.