Le diverse et artificiose machine del Capitano Agostina Ramelli ["The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli" (Paris, 1588)

Vannevar Bush: "As We May Think." The Atlantic Monthly. July 1945

Ted Nelson, Vassar, 1965: Hypertext

George Landow: Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology

In hypermedia, we see a literal embodiment of many major points of contemporary literary theory, particularly Derrida's idea of "de-centering" and Barthes's conception of the "readerly" versus "writerly" text.

Making sense of and connections within the increasing mass of printed words and the knowledge they represent, has been a continual challenge to humans. Ramelli envisioned the lone scholar with his collection of books using a mechanical device to make those books easily accessible. Hundreds of years of print culture added well established apparati to book technology: tables of contents, indexes, footnotes, bibliographies, page numbering and format, library catalogues and archival devices, (universities?), etc.

Bush's memex device is also a mechanical one, though he included more than just books. Ted Nelson took the idea took this idea into the electronic realm and coined the term hypertext to describe the connections possible in that environment. Landow and others have grounded the hypertext model, with its reader centric view, firmly in the postmodern world.