Confessions of a Basement Cosmonaut.
Lately, my in-box has been backed up with letters from people wondering how I’m doing here in bean-town, but, more frequently, people seem puzzled. Just what is it that I do, anyway? I say, well, I work for a hypertext publisher, but for all the good that does by way of an explanation, I might as well have said that I am a basement cosmonaut. I thought I would take a minute to explain it all to everybody, because I think its exciting. You might at least find it interesting.
The company I work for is called Eastgate Systems . They are, like I said, a hypertext publisher. Well, you probably know what a publisher is, so I’ll start there. What is it that we publish? You guessed it, hypertext. What’s that? Excellent question, and it is one that I wrote to peruse with my undergraduate senior thesis. Would you like to read that thesis? It really is my best attempt to define what hypertext is, anyway. It’s written in all the kind of high-fallutin’ academic talk that you might expect from something called a “thesis,” and as such it might bore you to tears, but, if you’re curious, you can read my thesis.
In layman’s terms, hypertext is text, broadly construed, that is printed in a computer instead of on a page. Some people prefer the word “media” to the word “text,” whatever. Some other people prefer to say that “hypertext” and “multimedia” are the same thing, again, whatever. You get the idea.
What’s it like to READ a hypertext? Well, I’m glad you asked, because I wrote one. This was the other half of my thesis project. It is far from being the best hypertext ever written, and perhaps it isn’t the best text of any kind that I have ever written, but I put a lot of work into it and I am very proud of it nonetheless. Besides, I’ll never know if it is an enjoyable read or not unitl somebody reads the damn thing, so, this is me, begging you to read what I wrote. It’s called “To Win, Simply Play.” I consider it a draft.
I suppose it is because of my thesis that I have this strange new job in Boston, but this isn’t about my thesis, its about what I do now. Eastgate does a variety of things. Primarily, they publish things that people can read. I have read a few of the things that they publish, and I’ve had a lot of fun with them. The experience of reading them is something between playing a game and reading a novel. I can heartily recommend that you read one called “Afternoon” Afternoon is the story of a man who may or may not have the impression that his wife and child may or may not have been involved in a gruesome automobile accident. His life, and the things that happen to him, essentially everything about him, they’re all different depending on how you read the story. You always have the option to choose what comes next, based on what you find interesting.
Sometimes, I ahve trouble convincing the people I know to read, particularly novels, and certainly unconventional kinds of things, so, perhaps you want to read something short, something you don’t have to buy, and something instantly gratifying. The story I have in mind for you is one that brought back some fond memories of my time in Japan. I think you should read “Lasting Image.”
Eastgate doesn’t only publish this kind of fiction, and so that’s not all I do with them. They also publish non-fiction, mostly works of theory about the notion of hypertext. Their biggest project is a magazine, which is also published electronically, called TEKKA. TEKKA is great. You could describe it as a thinking person’s answer to the fluff and hype crap we get from things like WIRED magazine. I’ve already plunged into the deep end of this project, but that’s all I’ll say about that for now. You can read TEKKA, some of it, without a subscription, from their homepage.
The third thing that gets published by the hypertext publisher is software. I am as new to the software thing as most people are, so I’ll just give you the official spheil about the two piece of software that are published.
The first one is called Storyspace .
Storyspace is a hypertext writing environment that is especially well suited to large, complex, and challenging hypertexts. Storyspace focuses on the process of writing, making it easy and pleasant to link, revise, and reorganize.”
The second one is called, aptly, Tinderbox.
“It stores your notes, ideas, and plans. It can help you organize then in a variety of ways (many of them visual ways!) and to make sense of them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs.”
So what do I do? Well, I make the coffee. That’s not al I do, my other very auxiliary assignment is to act as a sounding board at meetings and stuff. I guess it helps to have a new perspective sometimes. Primarily, my task for the summer is to update the course compendium on eastgate.com. There are several purposes for such a compendium. The first intent is to improve hypertext scholarship. The field of hypertext theory is relatively new, and as such it is difficult for the left hand to know what the right hand is doing within the field. A compendium of resources will help with this. Such a compendium may also help foster the decision to teach hypertext reading and writing, by showing that the subject has already warranted study in a variety of different academic contexts. A compendium might also help create a forum for the sharing of ideas, and also help prevent the same ideas from hatching redundantly and in a vacuum. The sponsorship of such a compendium by Eastgate Systems is intended to help show that the Hypertexts published by Eastgate are, and have been, worthy of serious academic concern. The compendium might also help attract new readers to the hypertexts.
My work will not be limited to this project, though. I will also be on hand for technical assistance with things like fixing printers when they break, and maintaining the network. For this my experience with Maryville College?s Information Systems Services dept. will prove invaluable. This is a very small company, and everyone in it is quite busy with their work. I am needed to help make things run smoothly.
Some of my work will include the more conventional tasks to be expected in the publishing line off work, such as proofreading; considering, within a group, the manuscripts and articles submitted for publication; and the composition of promotional materials such as ad copy and book jackets.
Overall, I expect to be a flexible and eager asset to the work that is done at Eastgate.
I hope, at the end of this page and a half of rambling, that you have come away with a better understanding of what it is that I do. My hope is that my mail box will now begin to collect accounts of what other people are doing, because I am getting a little bit lonely here in this big city where I know no one. Perhaps you would like to come visit me and have a Boston Tea Party, or something. I am off, now, to reap the benefits of a five dollar all-you-can-eat Indian buffet.
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