Hypertext
But much earlier, in 1960, the Xanadu project started with a completely different idea: since interactive screens are coming (who else knew?), we asked a different question: How can we IMPROVE on paper?
We foresaw a new screen literature of parallel, interconnected documents. ~
Among its many uses, hypertext can serve as a medium for a new kind of flexible, interactive fiction… the computer frees both author and reader from restrictions imposed by the printed medium and therefore allows new experiments in literary structure. ~
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled… when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly… It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails… ~
The world cannot be reduced simply into a system of types and subtypes, but more closely resembles interconnected and interdependent beings and events. Hypertext is a system of documents interlinked to one another that allows users to have both references and immediate view those references in their own context, as well as provide surrounding context for the current text.
This memex itself is in HTML, the most widely used hypertext document type in the world, currently, but other, porbably more superior, hypertext systems have been built and will continue to be built.