Theodor Holm Nelson was right to dedicate his writing to George Orwell. Both of the authors were, to use a terrible cliche, ahead of their time. The ideas they put forward are eerily familiar, though I am thankful that their predications on the fate of the human race itself have not yet been proven. While Orwell writes of a terrifying surveillance state, where your every move is recorded and watched, Nelson writes of a super-connected society, in which all information is stored in a shared network.

While reading Nelson’s extract a few familiar things ran through my head. Firstly, I though of the shared networks that schools, universities and workplaces use in order to share their files and make personal folders accessible from more than one device. Nelson talks of ‘universal storage of all interactive media’ and I feel that this was the aim of these types of networks, especially ones in the workplace. But in my experience, these networks are not used for file sharing, but rather to keep personal files accessible and convenient. Here is where Nelson’s visions for the future have been forgotten. Wouldn’t it be great if students saved their experiments with writing, video making and photography to public drives on these networks? It would be a great way to showcase work and get feedback. Workplaces still use fax devices to share files, but they have shared networks for years. I feel like the potential of these networks had never really been realised, at least not that I personally know of.

The second thing I thought of while reading Nelson’s chapter was the mysterious ‘Cloud’. I first heard about The Cloud from my uncle. He had paid a pretty big sum of money to get some space in The Cloud, and was storing things like photographs and work files there. He was excited at the prospect of The Cloud expect for one thing. Why did he have to pay to store something on what is essentially nothing? I don’t understand this concept either. I have a few things up there in The Cloud; my phone contacts and some music, because that’s what Apple put there for me automatically. Orwell’s ideas of the future were scary, but isn’t it also a bit frightening that huge companies like Apple are taking control and privatising an idea like The Cloud?

The final thing I thought of while reading about Nelson’s Xanadu System was Olivia Newton John. Enjoy.

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