Discussion of hypertext generally effaces the distinction between literary and non-literary uses of hypertext. The first hypertext proposal, Bush's memex, was intended as an information seeking device (Landow, pp. 7-8). But Landow calls this an "essentially poetic" machine, because it works by analogy and association. "Bush, we perceive, assumed that science and poetry work in essentially the same way" (p. 10) -- a point that he doesn't appear to find contentious. Note that the "problem" addressed by hypertext is stated as one of information (Landow, p. 8). Similarly, in the later account that Landow gives of J. Hillis Miller literary and non-literary writing appear to be treated as the same thing (Landow, p. 46). In the account of a hypertext for reading Milton (Landow, p. 80-82) the engagement with the poem seems to be considered in the same way as seeking information about it. Thus literature is dissolved into the general category of writing or discourse.