Extremism is often considered as antonym to compromise, which, depending on context, may be associated with concepts of balance or tolerance. In the negative connotation, compromise may be referred to as "capitulation", referring to a "surrender" of objectives, principles, or material, in the process of negotiating an agreement. In human relationships, "compromise" is frequently said to be an agreement that no party is happy with, this is because the parties involved often feel that they either gave away too much or that they received too little.
From cultural background and influences, the meaning and perception of the word "compromise" may be different: In the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth countries, the word "compromise" has a positive meaning (as a consent, an agreement where both parties win something); in the U.S., it can have rather negative connotations, as in "compromising principles" as a sell-out of basic beliefs.
Defining and finding the best possible compromise is an important problem in fields like game theory and the voting system.
Research has indicated that less-than-optimal compromises are often the result of negotiators failing to realize when they have interests that are completely compatible with those of the other party, and hence, they settle for suboptimal agreements. Mutually-better outcomes can often be found by careful study of both parties' interests, especially if done early in negotiations.
Visionary
Defined broadly, a visionary, is one who can envision the future. For some groups, this can involve the supernatural or use of mind-altering drugs.
A visionary state can be achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. One example is Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century artist/visionary and Catholic saint. Other visionaries in religion are Mohammed (who had a vision of and communed with the Angel Gabriel), St. Bernadette (who had a vision of contact with the Blessed Virgin), and Joseph Smith (who had a vision of contact with the Angel Moroni).
A "vision" can be political, religious, environmental, social, or technological in nature. By extension, a "visionary" can also be a person with a clear, distinctive and specific (in some details) vision of the future, usually connected with advances in technology or social/political arrangements. For example, Ted Nelson or U.S. Vice President Al Gore is referred to as a visionary in connection with the Internet.
Other visionaries simply imagine what does not yet exist but might some day, as some forms of "visioning" (or gazing) can provide a glimpse into the possible future. Therefore, visioning can mean seeing in a utopian way what does not yet exist on earth, but might exist in another realm, such as the ideal or perfect realm as imagined or thought. Examples are Buckminster Fuller in architecture and design, and some of the pioneers of personal computing such as Steve Wozniak. Some people use mathematics to make visionary discoveries in the nature of the universe. In that sense, a visionary may also function as a secular prophet. Some visionaries emphasize communication, and some assume a figurehead role in organizing a social group.
Artists may produce work loosely categorized as visionary art for its luminous content and/or for its use of artistic techniques that call for the use of extended powers of perception in the viewer: (e.g. Gustave Moreau, Samuel Palmer, Jean Delville, Ernst Fuchs, the French Symbolist Odilon Redon, Brion Gysin, Max Ernst, Stanley Spencer, Edward Burne Jones, Adolf Wolfli, Fred Sandback, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, and Henry Darger).
Visionary art can be incorrectly defined as a category of primitive art (art of those not formally trained) rather than describing people who have used their visions (or dreams) to create their paintings. Salvador Dali is one artist who would exemplify visionary art that is neither religious nor primitive.
Ted Nelson
Theodor Holm Nelson (Ted Nelson, born 1937) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965. He also is credited with first use of the words "transclusion", "virtuality", "intertwingularity" and "teledildonics". The main thrust of his work has been to make computers easily accessible to ordinary people. His motto is: "A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds." However, he is known for inventing many new words (neologisms) which few other people understand (such as "intertwingularity"), and his remarks contain humor to entertain rather than just inform. Consequently, some of his ideas have been met with negative reactions.
From a pessimist viewpoint, Ted Nelson promotes four maxims: "most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong".
Nelson started Project Xanadu in 1960. He wanted to create a new computer network that was easy to use and easy to understand. He wrote about the project in his books "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" (1974) and "Literary Machines" (1981). He has spent much of his adult life working on Project Xanadu and telling people about its benefits.
The Xanadu project was not very successful. There were many reasons, but not everyone agrees why the project did not go well. Journalist Gary Wolf published an unflattering history, "The Curse of Xanadu", on Nelson and his project in the June 1995 issue of "Wired". Nelson expressed his disgust on his website, referring to Wolf as a "Gory Jackal", and threatened to sue him. He also outlined his objections in a letter to "Wired", and released a detailed rebuttal of the article.
Nelson says that Tim Berners-Lee made some ideas from Xanadu become true by inventing the World Wide Web. But, Nelson dislikes the World Wide Web, XML, and all embedded markup. Nelson thinks that Berners-Lee's work is a much too simple way of doing his original plan:
HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT– ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management. – Ted Nelson (Ted Nelson one-liners )
Nelson co-founded Itty bitty machine company, or "IBM", which was a small computer retail store operating from 1977 to 1980 in Evanston, Illinois. The Itty bitty machine company was one of the few retail stores to sell the original Apple I computer. In 1978 he had a significant impact upon IBM's thinking when he outlined his vision of the potential of personal computing to the team that three years later launched the IBM PC.
Ted Nelson is currently working on a new information structure, ZigZag. More information about ZigZag is on the Xanadu project website. That website also has two versions of the Xanadu code that visitors can download. He is also currently developing XanaduSpace - a system for the exploration of connected parallel documents (an early version of this software may be freely downloaded from . He is a visiting fellow at Oxford University - based at the Oxford Internet Institute - where he works in the fields of information, computers, and human-machine interfaces.
Nelson earned a Bachelor's degree in philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1959, a Master's degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1963 and a Doctorate in Media and Governance from Keio University in 2002.
In 1998, at the Seventh WWW Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Ted Nelson was awarded the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award. He told the audience that it was the first award that he had ever received for his work.
In 2001 he was knighted by France as "Officier des Arts et Lettres". In 2004 he was appointed as a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and associated with the Oxford Internet Institute, where he is currently conducting his research.
In 2007 he celebrated his 70th birthday by giving an invited birthday lecture at the University of Southampton.