I'm not sure Nelson's work was influential and widely lauded at the time. It seems to have grown in significance since. I'd only started hearing of it substantially in ... let's call it the past two decades or so.
(I'm on the Diaspora* instance managed by the man who'd headed up Xanadu/Australia, which may have something to do with that.)
I suspect if I'd been paying closer attention to the Whole Earth / WELL crowd that might stretch back to the 1980s, and I believe Nelson's work featured there.
Google's Ngram Viewer seems to place peak Project Xanadu about 1990, so my own awarerness may not be the best guide:
That said ... I think Nelson's vision is more concrete than, say, "Cluetrain", though as describing a technical project, realisation of that vision has been ... mixed. (Project Xanadu does actually exist, though it's little used.)
(I'm on the Diaspora* instance managed by the man who'd headed up Xanadu/Australia, which may have something to do with that.)
I suspect if I'd been paying closer attention to the Whole Earth / WELL crowd that might stretch back to the 1980s, and I believe Nelson's work featured there.
Google's Ngram Viewer seems to place peak Project Xanadu about 1990, so my own awarerness may not be the best guide:
<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Ted+Nelson%2C%...> (Note that "Project Xanadu" is weighted 7x "Ted Nelson", so that both terms cover roughly the same vertical span
That said ... I think Nelson's vision is more concrete than, say, "Cluetrain", though as describing a technical project, realisation of that vision has been ... mixed. (Project Xanadu does actually exist, though it's little used.)