This book explores the history of hypertext, an influential concept that forms the underlying structure of the World Wide Web and innumerable software applications. Barnet tells both the human and the technological story by weaving together contemporary literature and her exclusive interviews with those at the forefront of hypertext innovation, tracing its evolutionary roots back to the analogue machine imagined by Vannevar Bush in 1945. ‘“Memory Machines” will appeal to anyone who is curious about the history of computing in general and hypertext in particular. This book is highly recommended for computer science students and for students of history of science and technology, as well as for computing and engineering enthusiasts.’ ―Stephanie Wical, Online Information Review ‘[A] richly layered account, focusing on oral histories as much as an analysis of documents. […] This volume provides a sophisticated and vital history of early computing, usefully exploring conceptual ideas around hypertext, outlining the constraints on pioneering efforts to implement models of hypertext as technical prototypes, and ultimately demonstrating how these collectively shaped all subsequent efforts to develop computer-based prototypes for information structuring and retrieval.’ ―Craig Hight, ‘Media International Australia’ ‘Walter Benjamin wrote that “It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather...what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. “Memory Machines” is, even for one among its participants, such a constellation of the now.’ ―Michael Joyce, Professor of English at Vassar College, New York Belinda Barnet is a lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. http://blog.arsmemoriae.com/ @Manjusrii Memory Machines The Evolution of Hypertext By Belinda Barnet Wimbledon Publishing Company Copyright © 2013 Belinda Barnet All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-85728-060-2 Contents Foreword, Preface, Chapter 1. Technical Evolution, Chapter 2. Memex as an Image of Potentiality, Chapter 3. Augmenting the Intellect: NLS, Chapter 4. The Magical Place of Literary Memory: Xanadu, Chapter 5. Seeing and Making Connections: HES and FRESS, Chapter 6. Machine-Enhanced (Re)minding: The Development of Storyspace, Conclusion, Notes, Bibliography, CHAPTER 1 TECHNICAL EVOLUTION How does one write the story of a computer system? To trace a technical history, one must first assume that there is a technical 'object' to trace – a system or an artefact that has changed over time. This technical artefact will constitute a series of artefacts, a lineage or a line. At a cursory level, technical 'evolution' seems obvious in the world around us; we can see it in the fact that such lineages exist, that technologies come in generations. Computers, for example, adapt and adopt characteristics over time, 'one suppressing the other as it becomes obsolete' (Guattari 1995, 40). But are we to understand this lineage from a sociological, an archaeological or a zoological perspective? And what is a technical artefact? I need to address these questions here for two reasons. First, because it is impossible to write a technical history without defining how that history will be constructed, and second, because these questions also concerned Douglas Engelbart, one of the early pioneers whose work we investigate in this book. The relationship between human beings and their tools, and how those tools extend, augment or 'boost' our capacity as a species, is integral to the history of hypertext and the NLS system in particular. Traditionally, history has ignored the material dimension of technical artefacts. Historians are interested in tracing cultural formations, personalities and institutions, and especially the social 'constructions' they erect around themselves. Technical artefacts don't have their own history; they are perceived as the products of culture. I have always found it strikingly odd, even offensive, that viruses or star formations are allowed to have their own history, but technologies are not. It's as though silicon (or calculus, or mathematics) has no existence outside of its function for human beings. As philosopher Daniel Little writes in a blog post: History is the sum total of human actions, thoughts, and institutions, arranged in temporal order. Call this 'substantive history'. History is social action in time, performed by a specific population at a time. Individuals act, contribute to social institutions, and contribute to change. People had beliefs and modes of behavior in the past. They did various things. Their activities were embedded within, and in turn constituted, social institutions at a variety of levels. (Little 2011) I do not have the space to unpack this in more detail here (that is another book for another time, but interested readers may find my artic