What do we take from such a reality? When we think of the history of technology, it operates like any other form of history. A linear direction from past to present. Things happen. Technologies get invented and adopted and eclipsed over and over again. Each of these is a point on the line of time.
But what if we took technology on the cosmological level? Past technologies don't exist in the past but as a part of the present galaxy. They can be explored, inhabited, renewed for use in another quadrant. The past is not in the past but indeed alive.
We don't have to look at the work of Douglas Engelbart or Ted Nelson as a past attempt of realizing what the computer could be. We can instead see them as realities in the sphere of technology that we can venture forth to. It makes the past truly alive, truly something we can interact with.