Intending to solve a concrete problem doesn't automatically mean a product designed under that intent in fact solves a concrete problem.
The paragraph above the phrase you quote, addressing the very principles you mention:
"Most of those principles make sense only if you don’t ever try it in the real world, where you will discover that many of them are not just of questionable value, or would be fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. (One of the systems that most embodied the principles of robust decentralized storage of files, which moved them closer to users requesting them for efficiency, was… Freenet, which immediately became notorious for child pornography.)"
Gwern elaborates at length about the principles, the concrete prototypes and the dissonance.
Did you just ctrl+f "solution in search of a problem" to criticize the analysis?
> fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal.
As I understand it, this fails to advances the broader "searching for a problem" argument. And is actually addressing a problem others have tried to solve later.
re. copyright holders fierce opposition: Youtube might be a good counter to the suggested tragedy of the anticommons. And on the high seas, napster's rise and the continued success of torrents suggest legally is not a barrier to success in and of it's self. The article reasonably ties copyright to free software. opensource has done pretty well. [The article's link back to ycombinator referencing Xanadu's allergic reaction to opening the code is an interesting candidate for why we're not using the OS now. Too locked down to get the love and exposure it needed? Bonus recursive side note: "has never believed in FLOSS" links to hackernews, demonstrating both back and forward linking -- another counterpoint to the presented augments against Xanadu's impracticality ]
Its not your (quoted) claim, but it's worth being explicit. Freenet is as legal as facebook or twitter[0]. People do illegal stuff with crypography. But it's ostensibly a way to protect from authoritarian overreach. Which still seems like a problem in search of a solution.
[0]: https://freenet.org/about/faq/#is-it-legal-to-run-a-freenet-...
> One example comes from U.S. law, used here for illustration rather than as a universal rule: 17 U.S.C. §512, part of the DMCA. It expressly addresses “transitory digital network communications” (automatic transmission, routing, and intermediate or transient storage) and “system caching” (certain automatic temporary storage of third-party material).
I don't understand what's your point. How does the existence of copyright breach bears on the fact that Xanadu was a fever dream and not a real solution to real problems and hence consigned to the list of fanciful technologies that never gained adoption?
I read the quoted text as "Xanadu's 'transclusion' can't work in the real world because of copyright and legal issues." But neither of those are issues for popular existing technologies.
Rereading your parent comment, I'm guessing my confusion is in connecting that quote to why Xanadu fails to solve "the concrete problem" or endorsing "a solution in search of a problem"/addressing "worse is better."
My comment was intended as a +1 to @Rygian: Xanadu was prescient wrt. file management and an opportunity to push back against Freenet=CSAM
I think Ted Nelson had a vision but not a good design. I agree with Gwern, his design was a materialization of his vision of a solution. It was not the response to a problem. I like Ted Nelson's ideas but sadly what he built was just not a very useful piece of software.
The paragraph above the phrase you quote, addressing the very principles you mention:
"Most of those principles make sense only if you don’t ever try it in the real world, where you will discover that many of them are not just of questionable value, or would be fiercely opposed by many entities, but outright illegal. (One of the systems that most embodied the principles of robust decentralized storage of files, which moved them closer to users requesting them for efficiency, was… Freenet, which immediately became notorious for child pornography.)"
Gwern elaborates at length about the principles, the concrete prototypes and the dissonance.
Did you just ctrl+f "solution in search of a problem" to criticize the analysis?