This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of its subjects. Like technology historian Steve Shapin and sociologist Thierry Bardini, I write in the ‘confident conviction that I am less interesting than the subjects I write about’ (Shapin cited in Bardini 2000, xiv). I have had the great privilege of meeting many of the people you will read about in these pages – except for Vannevar Bush, who died in 1974 – the colourful anecdotes, magical visions and prescient ideas you will find here have come directly from them or from their work. At times I felt like a media studies bowerbird, procuring brightly coloured memories, sticky notes and cryptic computer manuals from various computing science professors, writers and visionaries across the globe. In that sense, this book may be read as a simple history book. There is no need to be self-reflexive or clever when presented with such a treasure trove; it is intrinsically interesting and needs no posthistorical garnish (I'll confine that to the preface). That said, I do not claim to present you with the final word on hypertext history; this is an edited selection, a woven structure of deeply interconnected stories contributed in large part by the people who lived them.

I have spent months, years in fact, arranging this collection; it was first assembled as a PhD thesis in 1999, before I had children and consequently when I had the luxury of time. Time to do things like roam around Brown University gathering documents and stories from Andries van Dam and the Hypertext Editing System (HES) team; time to rummage through the Vannevar Bush archives at the Library of Congress looking for interesting correspondence; time to interview Doug Engelbart and feel embarrassingly starstruck; and time to travel to Keio University in Japan to meet Ted Nelson.