[revelation]

This paper thing sure stuck with him, then you see this video of him demoing what is less than a demo on some XP:

https://youtu.be/1yLNGUeHapA?t=3m16s

And it's fricking A4 paper in a black 3D void that they call "XanaduSpace". I mean, let's just stop here. Who are we ever going to call a crank if not this guy?

Apparently he has been claiming to be original HyperText inventor all the way back to 1965. He's like that guy claiming he invented email.

[scottLobster]

I see nothing wrong with that demo, in fact it's probably as revolutionary as he thinks. It effectively makes bibliographies obsolete and eliminates the overheard in tracking down sources. Add in his idea of micro-payments for quotations and you have viable financial incentive for people to publish work to Xanadu space. The whole 3D-space thing is a bit gimmicky, but could be useful in some contexts. It'd be great for academics/wikipedia/people who give a shit.

The idea of enabling branching knowledge paths for everything from media to education is also intriguing.

The issue when it comes to mass adoption is that most people don't give a shit. You need only look at comments on any news site to see the vast swath of people who read the headline and nothing else. They won't read the article, let alone care about sources, no matter how easy they are to track down, although Xanadu would seem to lessen the possible excuses.

There's also the issue that people are used to "free" ad-supported content, micropayments have yet to catch on even when offered. I'm still the only person I know who's even heard of Google Contributor.

And it's quite possible he was the first to come up with the concept of HyperText. He never claimed to have coded HTTP, merely to have invented the concept. True or not, he was clearly there on the ground floor. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Whether he was the first or not doesn't really matter anyway, I'm more interested in his ideas and practices than his historical claims.