July 27, 2007

You: hi Dohan

Dohan Tokhes: Hi

Dohan Tokhes: are you the organizer

You: yes

You: slow day

Dohan Tokhes: I have not heard of Xanadu before

You: I was just about to ask you that :)

Dohan Tokhes: is it like html

You: it has some interesting ideas

Dohan Tokhes: do you use it

You: in Xanadu, all the markup is stored separately

You: there has never been a complete implementation of it yet

You: just a few programs that demonstrate some of it's features

You: keeping the markup non-embedded gives the ability to be formatted in several different ways

You: it's kind of like layers or filters in a paint program, one format could be turned off and another on

You: so when a change needs to be made, it's made to the bare content and will show up in all the formats

You: another thing about Xanadu is what is called transclusions

You: to publish anything on it requires giving prior approval to have your document quoted anywhere at any length

You: but with the condition that all quotes link back to the original content and it's full context

You: at first documents would be just text, but all media would eventually be supported

You: to avoid broken links all versions would remain available with stable addresses

Dohan Tokhes: do you see near term increase in use of Xanadu

You: Ted Nelson, the inventor of it is working on a new implementation of it, but it still needs a lot of work

You: I am trying to rough out a demo of what it might look like in Rebol, but I am not yet a real programmer

Dohan Tokhes: Rebol is a computer language?

You: it was first done in C, and worked a little, back in the 80's

You: yes, Rebol is my favorite language

Dohan Tokhes: I have used perl a little

You: Then in the early 90's a new version of it was started in Smalltalk at Autodesk

You: but cancelled

You: another partial demo of it called Abora was done in Smalltalk recently

You: most of the other recent work is being done in Python

You: there is something called token_word done in Perl

Dohan Tokhes: have you had Xanadu dicussions here before? How was the turnout

You: yes, quite a few, I haven't been very regular lately, but plan on having them more often now

You: usually one or two people show up

Dohan Tokhes: I'll take a look at it online

You: the ultimate idea for Xanadu involves having set of links between all kinds of media, the links can be between spans, not just points or whole documents, and be able to overlap

Dohan Tokhes: what is a span

You: beginning with a character and ending with another later one, of any length

You: anything from one character to a complete document

You: you could have sets of links for a document and choose which to view

You: they would be visible showing both ends of the link at the same time

You: one thing that this type of linking could display are the changes between versions of a document

You: Abora, the Smalltalk program demonstrates that

You: and a Java demo called Docuplex

Dohan Tokhes: I will try to get a better idea of it on line, your website might help?

You: yes, I have a lot of links there, some things I wrote about it, some mindmaps I drew

You: I've been trying to understand it for about 10 years, others have been working on it for decades

Dohan Tokhes: I am also interested in your city in a buiding

You: it was the inspiration for many other hypertext programs

You: yes, arcologies are a great idea

You: some people are trying to build them in Second Life

Dohan Tokhes: arcology, means city in a building?

You: yes, architecture and ecology

You: the idea is to combine residences and businesses in the same building(s), making cars unnecessary

Dohan Tokhes: I am interested in small communities that possess wide ranging manufacturing and service abilities

You: with cheap oil gone, that will be needed more all the time

You: there's a movie on Google Video called "Peak Oil" that's a real eye-opener

You: I haven't owned a car in about 5 years

You: I ride an electric scooter

Dohan Tokhes: do you plan to live in a new style community

You: maybe someday

You: right now I live within 1 1/2 miles of nearly everything I need

Dohan Tokhes: a freind and I are trying to put one together.

You: where at?

Dohan Tokhes: his focus is permaculture and living post oil

Dohan Tokhes: NY

You: it will be a painful transition away from oil, we have come to depend on it so much

You: have you seen any of the episodes of "Jericho"?

Dohan Tokhes: no, is it on cable, I don't get many channels

You: I got it on iTunes

Dohan Tokhes: free?

You: there are 23 episodes so far

You: the pilot is free

Dohan Tokhes: what is it about

You: the rest are $2 each or $30 for all of them

You: nuclear wepons have destroyed a number of major cities in the US and disrupted communications

You: it's a fascinating look at some things we could face in the near future

You: have your heard of Arcosanti?

Dohan Tokhes: yes, in Arizona

You: yes, I would like to visit that sometime

Dohan Tokhes: there are many ecovillages now

Dohan Tokhes: and cohousing

You: yes, I haven't been keeping up real well with them lately

You: but I look at the Arcology Yahoo group sometimes

You: I built a small model about 10 years ago

Dohan Tokhes: my focus is the making a living together more than the housing. we plan a group that houses it self in various ways, while joining together for work , mostly off market

Dohan Tokhes: how big was the model

Dohan Tokhes accepted your inventory offer.

You: there's a picture of it

You: about 18 inches across

Dohan Tokhes: thanks, it was not resolving well. let me try again

You: but the real building would be 900 feet across

Dohan Tokhes: ah thats better

You: it takes a while to rez

Dohan Tokhes: green gardens all around

You: yes, on all the balconies

Dohan Tokhes accepted your inventory offer.

You: that's a close-up

You: businesses in the interior, housing on the outside

You: a lot of food could be grown on the balconies also

Dohan Tokhes: any manufacturing inside?

You: light assembly, that kind of thing

Dohan Tokhes: nice lookin design

You: but workshops of all kinds too

You: I think the key to building is make it modular and able to be inhabited very early

Dohan Tokhes: people move in when a small part is up?

You: the pyramidal structure would add resistance to the forces of nature and make it safer to build

You: yes, I conceive of moving in as soon as each residence is built

Dohan Tokhes: I'll follow your sl model as it goes up

You: SL has limitations to building that make it hard to model arcologies

You: you can't link large structures together in a sandbox, and it's expensive to rent an island

You: so I will probably make it in a 3D animation or CAD program

Dohan Tokhes: it's getting late for me. I should go. I'd like to stay in touch

You: I have Cinema 4D, so I could make a movie of moving around in it

You: OK, thanks for coming

Dohan Tokhes: how about a freind link

You have offered friendship to Dohan Tokhes

You: OK

Dohan Tokhes: see you again, bye

You: bye