What is the longest running unfinished project on the web older than the web itself? How about Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project. Did TBL base the web on Xanadu? I haven’t done the reading. Now that hard disks and network storage is so cheap, and processing power is even cheaper, why can’t we finish the project?

It could be the most important universal data model ever created. I think Ward Cunningham also deserves some credit for taking this forward.

About four years ago, I stumbled on Ka-Ping Yee’s (probably some karass version of what I would be if I were a real computer scientist) Crit Link project, originally published under the auspices of Doug Englebart’s Foresight Institute, and now gone (it’s supposed to be at crit.org, but I think not; nor is it on Ka-Ping’s zesty.ca. The first self-commenting system that I know of. Also take a look at Wendy Seltzer’s work, the Annotation Engine. Funny how a lawyer who cares about electronic freedoms is also into Xanadu.