Project XANNADU

"The Project that I've been working on, which really began with my term paper in the fall of 1960, and has gradually become something far larger, is now intended as that Unifying World -- so it would be a storage mechanism and indexing structure by which anyone can add documents to the ever-growing pool, 

IN their OWN style of indexing....

This depository needs to be a place that we can all reach electronically through telephone, perhaps through laser-beam and satellite, but through various electronic means, so that through our computer screens, we can bring the material that we want, as fast as we need it.

And this has to be available to everyone, everywhere --

And of course, because it's literary tradition, and because it's the magic place of literary memory, it HAS to be called XANADU."

-- Ted Nelson

"The Memory's a *funny* thing - isn't it?

An incredible feat of engineering, it sits in the medial

temporal lobe,

and it's most impressive FUNCTION : Is It's FILING

System.

It's better than ANYTHING a Supercomputer could do.

Another of My Favourite Facts - given that,

THAT'S What This Trial is All about:

Right Answers,

Wrong Answers,

Knowledge --Truth

...is that, when we are remembering something,

we're not *actually* recalling The Original Event..

What we are *DOING*

is remembering the LAST time, we remembered it -

So we are CONSTANTLY wiping Our Pasts,

and editing together A NEW One -

One that makes SENSE to Us, 

NOW - in The Present.

ALL Memories, therefore,

are by Definition :

A Lie.

They change.

WE change them.

Which, isn't A Crime, 

A Conspiracy, just —

Human Nature.

We can project Guilt, say,

Back onto An Event

That was, in fact, 

perfectly innocent.

I'm asking you all

To Try and Resist

A More Entertaining Falsehood

in favour of less-extraordinary Truth :

That Major Ingram simply 

knew The Answers to those

Questions

And THAT'S Why 

He Got Them RIGHT.”