Long before there was the world wide web there was Ted Nelson and Xanadu, a vision of a global two way hypertext system into which all the world’s knowledge would be poured. I happened across Ted’s writings while I was in college and actually applied for grant money to do research using Xanadu, which at that time was to be published by Autodesk. I wasn’t that great of a student and so my grant proposal was denied (it didn’t help that I was looking for roughly $50,000, at a time when the average grant was a few hundred dollars in stipend money to fund a visit to a remote museum or library), but I never lost my interest and ultimately it led to the career I now (largely) enjoy, so I was pleasantly suprised to run across this piece in the register today, covering the public launch of the new xanadu website which among other things has the source code for Xanadu. Amazing stuff, I wonder if it’ll actually lead to something tangible this go around or if it will be just another step in the long evolution of Xanadu.