Somewhat ambivalent about undisciplined linking, anxious Of that time - GUIDE, HyperCard, Intermedia - were all Hypertext." The other widely-available hypertext tools TINAC Manifesto said, "Three links per node or it's not a I think Storyspace was shaped by two overriding desires.įirst, a hypertext system that would truly embrace links. I did make some contributions to the final user interface. I wasn't part of the original design, though I saw a prototype at Hypertext '87, the first hypertextĬonference. Smith worked together to create the first Storyspace in late 1986-7. Michael Joyce, Jay David Bolter, and John B. Storyspace jay david bolter software#Eastgate's continuing role in developing and publishing authoring software is also important.Ĭan you talk about the creation of Storyspace? How do you see the role of Storyspace in the field - past, present, future? And it has also helped bring literary hypertext to a wider audience. The continuing role of Eastgate, of your vision in bringing together the writers in this field, publishing their work in a publishing model that includes royalties for writers, is veryĬore to the field. In addition to scholarship and research in the field, from a writer's point of view the enrichment of our practice through being able to read what others in the field were/are creating has been very influential in the development of hyperfiction. You did a great service to the field by being one of the first to publish classic works in the field. That gets us beyond the broad generalities and simple-minded media essentialism that still dominates so much discussion of the Web. For the first time, if you and I wanted to talk about the craft of hypertext writing, we could talk about a specific work we'd both read, a work with some ambition and scope, a work we could admire and with which we might disagree. These hypertexts helped focus discussion. It was the very definition of a methodological problem, and it seemed a good solution might be to provide some well-known "standard"Īnd so we published afternoon, and Victory Garden, and then King Of Space and Quibbling and its name was Penelope. Themselves, assigned graduate students to perform evaluative studies,and recruited their own undergraduates to serve as test subjects. Everyone in the field had built their own hypertext system they wrote hypertexts In those days, everyone was desperate to know whether people would (or could) read hypertexts. We started to publish hypertexts after the second hypertext conference in 1989. I wanted to be part of that, and this seemed to be a research area within the scope of a small, independent firm. Even in 1987, it was clear that the future of serious reading lies on the screen. When that blew up - DuPont wanted all its AI work to be done in FORTRAN IV - I came back to Eastgate to work on electronic books. Years passed I got my doctorate and went down to DuPont to help set up an AI research group. Computer Lib had just been published, and Ted was working on what would become Literary Machines. Ted was briefly flirting with an academic career. How did you get started working with hypertext literature? The interview concludes with his lively, educational, sometimes practical, sometimes provocativeĪdvice to new writers of hypertext narratives and with a look to the future of computer-mediated literature. In his interesting, informative responses to the interview questions, Bernstein talks about the history of StoryspaceĪnd Eastgate. In 2010, he was a keynote speaker at the 1st International Conference on Web StudiesĪt Toluca, Mexico, as well as a speaker at The Futures of Digital Studies 2010, the University of Florida In addition to his work as publisher and software developer, he is an internationally known lecturer for hypertext For over twenty-five years,Įastgate has published original hypertext fiction and nonfiction and pioneered hypertext tools for writers.Ī graduate of Swarthmore College, Bernstein received his PhD (in Chemistry) from Harvard University. He is the author of The Tinderbox Way, whichĭescribes the design philosophy of Tinderbox as a personal content assistant for visualizing, analyzing,Īnd sharing notes, and co-editor with Diane Greco of Reading Hypertext. Hypertext tools including Tinderbox, Twig, and Storyspace. Mark Bernstein is chief scientist at Eastgate Systems in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he develops new Electronic Literature Authoring Software - Interview with Mark Bernstein
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