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Ted Nelson knows who he is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

Ted Nelson believes that Mochizuki is the real Satoshi behind Bitcoin, because of the way both projects were dumped into the world's lap. I just saw his video last night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

⬐ psychometry

Ridiculous. The mathematics of one has nothing to do with the other.

⬐ kazinator

All the same, couldn't Mochizuki could chew up the Bitcoin mathematics for breakfast and spit it out? Being Satoshi could just be a kind of footnote in his life. (I don't suspect this myself, but it's can't be dismissed that easily; certainly not on grounds of different mathematics.)

⬐ AngrySkillzz

No. Cryptography is complicated, it's not just something you dabble in and then put together a complex protocol like Bitcoin with few mistakes. Not even mentioning the large programming task to implement that effectively. Cryptography is it's own sizable field of study that takes a lot of work to master.

⬐ jordigh

The bitcoin protocol is nowhere nearly as complicated as Mochizuki's proof. The Bitcoin whitepaper can be understood without difficulty by most "laymen", i.e. common programmers of modest ability such as myself. And Satoshi's original code was decidedly amateurish. Satoshi was clever in solving the consensus problem, but he's not some master cryptographer.

Ted Nelson created a YouTube series, Computers for Cynics, which is his history of modern computing technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGPQaICjk

In one amusing video, he proposes that Satoshi Nakomoto, the creator of Bitcoin, is a pseudonym used by Shinichi Mochizuki, the mathematician who found a proof for the abc conjecture with his inter-universal geometry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/papers-english.htm...

Ted Nelson is very quotable and I would highly recommend reading at least the freely available excerpt [1] from his seminal 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines to anyone who frequents HN. For those who don't know, his most famous invention is the term "hypertext" and he also appears to have invented, though is lest often acknowledged for, the history stack with its accompanying "back" button in Web browsers.

Nelson's writings have a different sensibility from the mainstream of both his fellow computing pioneers of the 1970s and the hackers of today. An example of his thinking from before even UNIX was a household name is that Nelson decried hierarchy as a form of organization for data (e.g., in a computer's file system), instead emphasizing association [2], which he thought closer to how humans actually organize knowledge. He also argued that instead of dialogue-based computer instruction that was taking off at the time the best method to use a computer for learning would be to "motivate the user and let him loose in a wonderful place", that place being a hypertext knowledge base (see [1], p. 313).

It is disappointing that in spite of Nelson's books being incredibly influential (to the point where they were reprinted by Microsoft Press because of the company's fondness for the author) most of his ideas never saw a complete implementation in a popular product. I'd love to read a doctoral thesis/book on the history of Project Xanadu -- a hypertext Web project started in 1960 that was supposed to have content transclusion and microtransactions (!) -- with an in-depth analysis of the factors that led it to where it is now (i.e., still unfinished today). (Gary Wolf's article "The Curse of Xanadu" [3] is the closest we have to that but it has multiple problems, to the point where Nelson has published a refutation [4].)

Today Ted Nelson's background in art (the man has, among other things, a claim to writing the world's first rock musical [5]) and fondness for pure performance (which is what I believe his recent video "I Think I Know Who Satoshi Is" [6] to be) may be a factor that limits the appeal of his message to most "techies" (his term), preventing them from more deeply investigating his message.

[1] http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-21-nelson.pdf

[2] Nelson's alternative to the file hierarchy was associative "metadata" a-la the MEMEX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEMEX#Associative_trails). With WinFS canned I'm still waiting for someone to implement something even close to that.

[3] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html

[4] http://xanadu.com.au/ararat

[5] http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/2007/12/10/the-first-rock-...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

⬐ bachback

I very much agree. I find it amazing that he does not get more credit. What is very unfortunate is that Ted never took the time to learn more about programming languages. For example file systems are there for a reason and only now, with all the computing power, can we partly realize alternative structures.

⬐ bachback

P.S.: TN is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Perhaps not top10, but definitely top50, after Einstein, Freud, Chomsky, etc. He talked about personal computing before personal computers. He invented (i.e. thought of) Hypertext, before people did have access to computers. Building things is important, no doubt. But thinking about them is also important. Note the three thinkers I mentioned also never built anything. They wrote books/articles. For instance Nelson largely influenced IBM in building the PC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kasu0BhRFGo. He also influenced Steve Jobs, I believe quite heavily. At least Woz mentions the influence of Nelson and I think many ideas of Jobs actually came from Nelson in some sense.

⬐ reeses

In re hypertext, there is precedent in the widely published works of Vannevar Bush.

Nelson spent a lot of time refining many ideas that were not really viable before the availability of computers. Given the timeframe (growing up under the shadow of the Military Industrial Complex and then maturing during the Cold War/proxy wars) he hit a very ripe time for populist activists.

I do think Nelson is one of the most influential thinkers regarding information science, but not as much as he desperately reminds people that he was. I also do not think his limitation is his inability to program computers, as he had a number of well-funded people helping at different times.

I suspect that, if you were to sit down and force rank the 50 most important thinkers of the 20th century, you'd have to exclude Nelson. Had he realized his ideas in a timely fashion, or inspired anyone to realize and exceed his visions, then his place would be secured.

However, I think much of what he created, other than the specifics of a great potential implementation, would be classified as simultaneous invention. Semantic networks existed before hypertext and it's a pretty nominal step from there to the basics of hypermedia. The Mother of All Demos is probably the best example of his contemporaries realizing their ideas.

What he does have is charisma and an ability to communicate his ideas. He gets people fired up about his dreams of a better world, and yet it has not come to pass. No one has been inspired enough to implement Xanadu. It's appropriately named. It's an interrupted dream that is incomplete.

⬐ leoc

His /Geeks Bearing Gifts/ http://www.lulu.com/shop/ted-nelson/geeks-bearing-gifts/pape... http://hyperland.com/ccynPage.htm is well worth the money too.

There is a date. See his youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0

If he had wanted to speak to the man directly, he could have cryptographically done so. Tell the world that you know who he is, but not reveal the name, then publish a cryptographic hash of his name. That probably catches the real guy's attention (regardless of whether Ted got it right or not).

⬐ claudius

While somewhat plausible (and I have to admit I thought of the mathematician myself the first time Nelson presented his supposed properties), there is one reason to doubt this:

Building both Bitcoin and the vast framework to prove the ABC conjecture within a few years time would be too much for a single person, wouldn’t it?

⬐ Casseres

Maybe for the average person who could even understand his writings (I can't). However after reading his short bio on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki#Life

It sounds like this is an extraordinary man. And as Ted Nelson indicated, he graduated from Princeton as a salutatorian in only 3 years.

⬐ claudius

Certainly an extraordinary man, yes. But contrary to e.g. Einstein’s annus mirabilis, inter-universal geometry is not a few fancy new ideas in existing fields, which would generally allow to have many such ideas in a short time (albeit unlikely), but a completely new, and apparently enormous, field. It’s also not really related to cryptography in any particular way (as far as I can see), so there’s no synthesis between the development of the one and the other.

⬐ zorlem

A recent article about Mochizuki's proof https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685166 that was a great read for the uninitiated like me.

⬐ taternuts

Definitely compelling, and as about engaging as an older gentleman rambling at a camera in a field can get

⬐ rdl

Who?

⬐ Casseres

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki

In the Youtube video, Ted Nelson says that his homepage is in English. I would argue that it is actually in Japanese, but with an English translation:

Japanese: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/

English: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html

⬐ rdl

Unlike Wei Dai, this guy does not seem to be a developer with a lot of code out there which looks basically like the Bitcoin code. (I am in a Bitcoin conference session right now so I can't watch the video to tear into it more specifically)

⬐ bachback

ATTENTION GRABBING. Cypherpunks != mathematicians. I find it very hard to believe that a mathematician who writes 500 page papers invents Bitcoin on the side. Mathematicians of this style live in their own world.

⬐ rdl

There are some indicators that Satoshi wasn't actually an applied crypto guy for a long period, since he overlooked a few basic things but got some more serious things correct. Might actually be more of a database/distributed systems guy who also knew crypto and finance from more recent interests.

I was talking with Adam Back about serious candidates this weekend; maybe 25 known people who could have been Satoshi and are known in the space, but absolutely plausible it could have been and individual or small team who were immersed in it for a few months or years too.