Vapourware: The tech that never was

Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu was a system designed to link computer documents, decades before the Internet came into being. It predates the World Wide Web as the first iteration of hypertext, devised in 1960 by American sociologist Ted Nelson, who also coined the latter term. It has never seen the light of day as a useful creation, and was greatly overshadowed by Tim Berners-Lee's HTML -- which Nelson once said was "precisely what we were trying to prevent -- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins...".

At its most basic level, Xanadu's intention was to allow a computer user to read a quote in a document and see the document that quote came from, along with where other quotes made in the original source were quoted, and where all other documents using material from an original source were being copied. So in the case of Wikipedia, a page filled with quotes, sources and citations could be followed to their original sources. You would also be able to see every document that's quoting or referencing the Wikipedia article.

Released in 2007, XanaduSpace is an 11-page demonstrative application that allows anyone to see the advantages of what Project Xanadu envisioned. The application's site says Xanadu "allows you to work with parallel documents -- pages connected side-by-side by many connections".

While Xanadu could have seen better fortune if the World Wide Web had never become dominant, its architecture may never have allowed such a diverse advancement of technologies like we have seen with HTML, XML, the Internet and everything these creations have made possible.

As a matter of fact...
Ted Nelson also coined the term 'teledildonics' -- sex-toy technology that allows devices to be controlled remotely through a computer.