Influential Concepts: How Vannevar Bush's Memex and Ted Nelson's Hypertext Shaped Information Science and the Internet

Damir Tomić

Damir Tomić

Keywords: Memex, Hypertext, Information Science, Bush, Nelson

Abstract

The development of the internet and information science has been shaped by the contributions of many pioneers in the field. Two of the most influential figures in this regard are Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson, who proposed the concepts of the "memex" and "hypertext" respectively. The memex, first proposed by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 essay "As We May Think," is a theoretical device that aimed to enhance human memory and knowledge by allowing people to store and recall information in a mechanical way. On the other hand, Ted Nelson introduced the concept of hypertext, a system of linking documents and other resources, in his 1960s work "Literary Machines". In this paper, we will compare and contrast the contributions of these two pioneers, examining the similarities and differences in their concepts and the extent to which they have influenced the development of the internet and information science.

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