Luckily it was easily recovered (this was back before I'd particularly used a Mac at all). I think it had been in development for a year or so at that point, and it had some problems, such as the one that caused me to lose my final project the day before it was due. Only one other person took the course, a librarian at Cornell taking it extramurally, so when the time came to do the final paper, Jay introduced me to his program, Storyspace. It was a seminar tracing the evolution of information dissemination from the oral tradition to the present electronic media. I found a course in the Society for the Humanities (a department at Cornell that focuses on a different subject each year and is staffed primarily by visiting professors) taught by Jay Bolter. Back in the fall of 1986 when I was a sophomore at Cornell, I was looking for interesting courses that I could take, having been accepted to a program (the College Scholar program) that waived all course requirements. Storyspace has had a long history, and it is one of the few programs that I've followed for much of its development. Mark Bernstein of Eastgate has relayed some of Storyspace's more interesting uses, including ethnographic field notes and Australian parliamentary strategy, not to mention several extremely interesting pieces of hypertextual fiction, such as Michael Joyce's "Afternoon" and others which should be available from Eastgate by now.
All three have been active in the academic conferences and forums that focus on hypertext, especially those emphasizing the overlap between hypertext technology and creative use within the humanities. Smith all work at institutions of higher learning, if you will. I suspect that is because the authors, Jay David Bolter, Michael Joyce, and John B. The program is addictive and encourages constant and creative use.ĪDAM: So far, Storyspace seems primarily to have found a market in the Macintosh-savvy crowd in higher education. While the prospect of writing hyper-literature may not thrill everyone, users will find that Storyspace can fit a great variety of needs: notepad, personal information management (PIM), computer aided instruction (CAI) authoring, database work, and more.
Indeed, part of Eastgate's business is the publication of new hypertext efforts, for which the manual includes an appeal. The program bids fair to bring hypertext into common use. Engst, Eastgate Systems has released its new version of Storyspace: when I started collaborating trans-Pacifically on this review with Adam my copy was called 1.07, though the "About" box read 1.0 now we are up to 1.1, and intriguing noises about the next version are coming from Eastgate. Storyspace is available from a few dealers, but Eastgate is by far the best source. Generous educational discounts are also available. 10-packs for offices and labs are available for $495. Price and Availability: - Single copies of Storyspace cost $160. To get in touch with Eastgate, call 1-80.Cambridge, MA Penguins out of a possible 10 I am a supporter and friend of theirs, so I am not entirely I should also add that, although I am not affiliated withĮastgate or StorySpace, I think their products are good, and Worthwhile initiation into this new medium (.?!). Sophisticated and versatile hypertext system, and using it is a very I have played with StorySpace a little, and have also read some of theįiction written in it (also from Eastgate). Is distributed by Eastgate Systems in Cambridge Mass. StorySpace was originally conceived as a writing tool, but has sinceīeen used as an organizer, courseware authoring system, environment It is then possible to use the keywords to select sets of links to Links can also be created betweenĭifferent text spans, and the links can be keyworded. The person using it creates "spaces" whichĬan contain text and/or other spaces. StorySpace is a hypertext authoring system that runs on the
This is a rather tardy reply to the query about StorySpace. Subject: Re: Coover article in NYT Bk Rvw on electronic fiction This message) and this might be close to a Mac front end for the web. Of the technical people on the project, Mark Bernstein, (he's cced on I don't know how interesting this will be to people, but I called one Next in thread: Jean Francois Groff: "Re: Storyspace Mac hypertext tool".Previous message: Jean Francois Groff: "Re: HTML DTD enclosed".Next message: Jean Francois Groff: "Re: Storyspace Mac hypertext tool".Www-talk from July to August 1992: Storyspace Mac hypertext tool Storyspace Mac hypertext tool Mark Alexander Davis-Craig ( 16 Jul 92 12:12:59 -0400