As technological advances improved scientists’ ability to produce electrical devices and components, the visionaries’ ideas become further complex and deliberate.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, an American engineer known for his role in the development of the atomic bomb, proposed an electromechanical devise better known as the Memex. The Memex was a proto-hypertext computer system that would allow scientist or researchers to look at a document on microfilm and make links to other documents, and describe their relationship. The Memex and a library-worth of microfilm would be contained in a desk. The user would be at liberty to add or remove microfilm texts at will. The most significant idea of the Memex is the ability for users to link documents in relation to one another for later use. This would be similar to Diigo in the respect that documents usually thought of as unrelated could be grouped together in a logical and sequential format.

Despite Vannevar Bush’s aspirations, the Memex never took flight. However, his ideas did. Shortly after, the world made a breakthrough, the computer chip.

In 1968, the world was introduced to the powerful union between computer and the internet, which is known today as “The Mother of All Demos” or MOD. The MOD refers to the demonstration given by Doug Engelbart that showcased NLS (the oNLine system). NLS featured groundbreaking research. Engelbart introduced the world to the first computer mouse, email, document sharing, video-conferencing, and hypertext. Hypertext allows an individual to start at any point, end at any point, and go back to any point of the text without effort; unlike the “set in stone” aspects of static text.

The oNLine System was the first time practical public use of a network of computers was showcased to the world. It put the power and benefit of the internet into perspective for educators and researchers around the world. However, the theories for its further development were still in their infancy, and a widespread public implementation was still nearly twenty years away.

In 1960, Ted Nelson founded a well known project called Xanadu (Zan-uh-dew). Xanadu attempts to create computers accessible to everyone. His motto: “A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.”

Xanadu is important because it features the idea of “two-way” linking. Two way linking would allow a user to link to a page, and that page would then feature the ability to link back to the other page. This has been created in the primitive form of “track back” links in popular blogging platforms.

Xanadu would also allow for the protection of copyrighted material. It would prevent the breaking of links, because every published document could forever be accessed. The document could be edited and accessed as a later version, but the original links would be preserved to the document version it linked to.

It is important to remember Xanadu is still in production 40 years later. The project has grown, but has never achieved its initial purpose. It has largely fallen to the wayside due to the popularity and accessibility to the World Wide Web.