It is in "As We May Think" that Bush introduces his prophetic concept of the Memex, or Memory Extension, an easily accessible, individually configurable storehouse of knowledge. Bush conceives of the Memex through myriad other technologies he describes in this essay as well: the Cyclops Camera, a photographic device "worn on the forehead" as well as film that can be developed instantly through dry photography, advances in microfilm, a "thinking" machine, and a Vocoder, which he describes as "a machine that could type when talked to." He predicted that the "Encyclopaedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox…A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk." Bush's proposed mechanisms are based on a rational organisational system, which would solve and control the endless flow of information.

Around the same time Bush was developing the concept of the Memex machine, H.G. Wells was imagining collective intelligence through his concept of a World Brain. He formulated this idea in a collection of scientific essays about "constructive sociology, the science of social organisation" ("World Brain" xi) collected in his book, World Brain. Here he proposed that only well-coordinated human thinking and research could solve the massive problems threatening humanity. In the 1995 edition of World Brain, Alan Mayne writes a seventy-page introduction on contemporary technological developments, particularly the Web, that parallel Wells's ideas. Without any knowledge of computer systems, Wells proposed the World Brain as a continuously updated and revised comprehensive encyclopaedia as a result of a systematic collaborative effort of a world-wide group of scholars, intellectuals, and scientists.

Alongside Bush's Memex, Wells's vision was prophetic of Douglas Engelbart's ideas about collective intelligence through the use of technology. Directly inspired by Bush, Engelbart pursued his vision and, among other key innovations, succeeded in developing a mouse pointing device for on-screen selections. Drawing on his experience as a radar operator in World War II, Engelbart envisioned how computers could visualise information through symbols on the screen: "When I saw the connection between the cathode-ray screen, an information processor, and a medium for representing symbols to a person, it all tumbled together in about a half an hour" (Rheingold, "Virtual Community," 65). Engelbart's seminal essay, "The Augmentation of Human Intellect," in turn came to the attention of J.C.R. Licklider, who had also been thinking about the connection between human brains and computers. Licklider's equally visionary paper around the same time, "Man-Computer Symbiosis," predicted a tight partnership of machines and humans in which machines would do the repetitive tasks, thereby allowing humans more time to think (Licklider).

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a researcher and professor and also affiliated with the top-secret DOD research facility, Lincoln Laboratory (also associated with MIT), Licklider, together with his graduate student, Evan Sutherland, helped usher in the field of computer graphics. Later he moved to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and, through his Defence Department connections, funded Engelbart's Augmentation Research Centre (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute which produced the first word processors, conferencing systems, hypertext systems, mouse pointing devices and mixed video and computer communications. Engelbart's ARC became the original network information centre that centralised all information gathering and record keeping about the state of the network. Engelbart was particularly concerned with "asynchronous collaboration among teams distributed geographically" (Rheingold, "Virtual Community," 72).