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Lot 1081
DREAM MACHINES/COMPUTER LIB INSPIRATION FOR THE PERSONAL COMPUTER REVOLUTION.
NELSON, TED. Dream Machines / Computer Lib. Original paste up proofs, 1974,
NELSON, TED. Dream Machines / Computer Lib. Original paste up proofs, 1974,
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25 October 2022, 14:00 EDT
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DREAM MACHINES/COMPUTER LIB
INSPIRATION FOR THE PERSONAL COMPUTER REVOLUTION.
NELSON, TED. Dream Machines / Computer Lib. Original paste up proofs, 1974, 590 x 760 mm. With original pen and ink cover art.
Provenance: The author Ted Nelson, who had coined the term "hypertext" and helped to develop some of its earliest implementations.
"The epic of the computer revolution, the bible of the hacker dream," (Levy p 174).
STEVE WOZNIAK: "[TED NELSON] IS LIKE A GOD TO ME," said in his speech at the April 2014 Interwingled Festival. "He had an important part in my whole life and background going back to the Homebrew Computer Club when the ideas of computers for people were really becoming important and getting into me. The way it worked back then (was) we had a few great leaders of our club and they usually came from a humanistic point of view. They weren't just technologists. They said, 'here are the social benefits computers are going to bring to society, education, communication,' and the little geek like me was going to be writing programs and solving problems for our companies and we were going to be more important than the big huge companies. And I got into my head I was always for the little guy should be more important than the rich and the powerful. At our computer club the bible was Computer Lib - and the people [who] spoke of it were Stanford Professors of sociology, they weren't engineering people necessarily. They were referring to this book and how we would have this glorious world describing some of the links and the micro-payments - Wow! And I sat there listening to this, being influenced by great academic people who were influenced by Ted. And I sat there listening to their stories and I thought, 'I got to be a part of this - my life is Great Technologist. I have to be able to provide technology to help this to happen.' So the first computer I developed quickly, a modification of something else, I would give it away for free, pass it out all my designs, no copyright notices. They didn't want this (to find and solder components). They wanted complete products and Steve Jobs was very good at complete products. That was one of the big reasons for starting Apple Computer."
Ted Nelson's Dream Machines / Computer Lib was like an inspiration factory, brimming with optimism for the future of computing. It's easy to see how this inspired Steve Wozniak to build the computers that would popularize personal computing. Although the densely-packed work, which was influenced by Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalogue, includes detailed technical information on every aspect of computing, at times it's also, as Wozniak had indicated, a work of sociology. On the first page of Dream Machines he states: "The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more." It's fascinating to see how in 1974 (and even years before) Nelson was already describing his vision of hypertext - Xanadu. When Tim Berners-Lee was working on the Web he paid Nelson a visit. "It was a pleasant meeting, but Nelson was annoyed that the Web lacked key elements of Xanadu. He believed that a hypertext network should have two-way links, which would require the approval of both the person creating the link and the person whose page was being linked to. Such a system would have the side benefit of enabling micropayments to content producers" (Isaacson p 419). Reading about Nelson's Xanadu project in Dream Machines it seems visionary even now, more than half a century after its introduction. Isaacson, Walter. Innovators. NY: Simon & Schuster, [2014]; Levy, Stephen. Hackers [NY:] Penguin, [1994].
NELSON, TED. Dream Machines / Computer Lib. Original paste up proofs, 1974, 590 x 760 mm. With original pen and ink cover art.
Provenance: The author Ted Nelson, who had coined the term "hypertext" and helped to develop some of its earliest implementations.
"The epic of the computer revolution, the bible of the hacker dream," (Levy p 174).
STEVE WOZNIAK: "[TED NELSON] IS LIKE A GOD TO ME," said in his speech at the April 2014 Interwingled Festival. "He had an important part in my whole life and background going back to the Homebrew Computer Club when the ideas of computers for people were really becoming important and getting into me. The way it worked back then (was) we had a few great leaders of our club and they usually came from a humanistic point of view. They weren't just technologists. They said, 'here are the social benefits computers are going to bring to society, education, communication,' and the little geek like me was going to be writing programs and solving problems for our companies and we were going to be more important than the big huge companies. And I got into my head I was always for the little guy should be more important than the rich and the powerful. At our computer club the bible was Computer Lib - and the people [who] spoke of it were Stanford Professors of sociology, they weren't engineering people necessarily. They were referring to this book and how we would have this glorious world describing some of the links and the micro-payments - Wow! And I sat there listening to this, being influenced by great academic people who were influenced by Ted. And I sat there listening to their stories and I thought, 'I got to be a part of this - my life is Great Technologist. I have to be able to provide technology to help this to happen.' So the first computer I developed quickly, a modification of something else, I would give it away for free, pass it out all my designs, no copyright notices. They didn't want this (to find and solder components). They wanted complete products and Steve Jobs was very good at complete products. That was one of the big reasons for starting Apple Computer."
Ted Nelson's Dream Machines / Computer Lib was like an inspiration factory, brimming with optimism for the future of computing. It's easy to see how this inspired Steve Wozniak to build the computers that would popularize personal computing. Although the densely-packed work, which was influenced by Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalogue, includes detailed technical information on every aspect of computing, at times it's also, as Wozniak had indicated, a work of sociology. On the first page of Dream Machines he states: "The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more." It's fascinating to see how in 1974 (and even years before) Nelson was already describing his vision of hypertext - Xanadu. When Tim Berners-Lee was working on the Web he paid Nelson a visit. "It was a pleasant meeting, but Nelson was annoyed that the Web lacked key elements of Xanadu. He believed that a hypertext network should have two-way links, which would require the approval of both the person creating the link and the person whose page was being linked to. Such a system would have the side benefit of enabling micropayments to content producers" (Isaacson p 419). Reading about Nelson's Xanadu project in Dream Machines it seems visionary even now, more than half a century after its introduction. Isaacson, Walter. Innovators. NY: Simon & Schuster, [2014]; Levy, Stephen. Hackers [NY:] Penguin, [1994].
Footnotes
"Ted Nelson had a self-diagnosed ailment of being years ahead of his time," Levy p 174.
Saleroom notices
Please note this lot consists of original paste up art for the entire book, not the proof.