Eastgate Systems, Inc. is an American electronic publishing and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts[1] Founded in 1982 by Mark Bernstein, the company is known for its role in the development of hypertext publishing and electronic literature.[2][3][4][5]
Company type | Corporation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronic publishing, Educational technology, Software publishing |
| Founded | December 1982 |
| Headquarters | Watertown, Massachusetts |
Key people | Mark Bernstein |
| Products | Storyspace, Tinderbox, Hypertext fiction, Electronic literature |
| Website | www |
Eastgate became one of the best-known publishers of hypertext fiction through works such as afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce and Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson.[6] The company publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in hypertext formats and has developed software tools including Storyspace and Tinderbox.[7][8][9]
It publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry hypertexts by established authors with careers in print, as well as new authors. Its software tools include Storyspace, a hypertext system created by Jay David Bolter, Michael Joyce and John B. Smith,[10] in which much early hypertext fiction was written.[11]
History
editEastgate Systems was founded by Mark Bernstein in 1982 and developed hypertext tools.[12] Joyce and Bolter launched Storyspace in 1987, at the first annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Hypertext.[13] Joyce presented afternoon, a story as a case-study for the tool; the work is widely considered the first work of hypertext fiction[14] and was published by Eastgate in 1990.[15] In 1995, Eastgate published Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.[16] These legacy works can be found in academic libraries though not all institutions maintain the now obsolete hardware required to interact with these titles.[17] However, a number of specialized media labs, such as The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space, do maintain both the software and the hardware to read these works.
Eastgate has published series of works as hypertext journals, including the Eastgate Quarterly.[18]
Robert Coover highlighted Eastgate as "the primary source for serious hypertext" in The New York Times Book Review in 1993,[19] a quote which still features prominently in Eastgate's tagline.[20] Between 1993-6, Eastgate published eight issues of The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext.[21]
Products
editEastgate developed several software tools associated with hypertext writing and research. Storyspace, created by Jay David Bolter, Michael Joyce, and John B. Smith, allowed authors to create nonlinear works using linked text nodes and visual maps. Storyspace writing environment consists of boxes (nodes) and arrows (named links) that show connections between nodes. Much early hypertext fiction was written using the platform.[22]
The company later developed Tinderbox, a note-taking and content management application designed for organizing, analyzing, and visualizing interconnected information in a hypertextual environment.[23]
Publications
editFiction
edit- Michael Joyce: afternoon, a story (1987, 1990), Twilight, a Symphony (1996) [24] (Storyspace)
- Sarah Smith: The King of Space (1991)[25] (Hypergate)
- Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall; Forward Anywhere
- Judy Malloy: its name was Penelope (1993)[26] (Eastgate published the Storyspace version)
- Carolyn Guyer: Quibbling (1992)[27]
- Stuart Moulthrop: Victory Garden (1992)[28] (Storyspace, redone in The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space)[29]
- Deena Larsen Marble Springs (1993), Century Cross (1994), Samplers—Nine vicious little hypertexts (1997)
- John McDaid: Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse (HyperCard)
- Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces (1994)[30] (Storyspace)
- Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl (1995) (Storyspace)
- Bill Bly: We Descend, Volume One (1997) (Storyspace, Tinderbox)
- Richard Holeton: Figurski at Findhorn on Acid (2001) (Storyspace)
- J. Yellowlees Douglas: I have said nothing
- Kathleen McConnell under Kathy Mac: Unnatural Habitats
- Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces
- Mary Kim Arnold: Lust
- Mark Bernstein: Those Trojan Girls (2016)[31]
- Megan Heyward: Of day, of night (2004)
- Wes Chapman: Turning In
- Edward Falco: A Dream with Demons
- Rob Swigart: Down Time
- Tim McLaughlin: Notes Toward Absolute Zero
- Judith Kerman: Mothering (StorySpace)[32]
- Richard Smyth:Genetis
- Clark Humphrey The Perfect Couple
Poetry
edit- Robert Kendall and Richard Smyth: A Life Set for Two (Visual Basic)[33]
- Stephanie Strickland, True North (StorySpace)[34]
- Jim Rosenberg, Integrams (Hypercard)[35]
Non-fiction
edit- Roderick Coover:Cultures in Webs
- David Kolb: Socrates in the Labyrinth
- Diane Greco: Cyborg, engineering the body electric
- Eric Steinhart: Fragments of the Dionysian Body
- George Landow: Writing at the Edge; The Dickens Web;
- George Landow and Jon Lanestedt:The In Memoriam Web
- Guiliano Franco: Quam Artem Exerceas
See also
editNotes
edit- ↑ FAQ. Eastgate.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-28.
- ↑ Hypertext connects disparate data: extract a world of data, layer by layer by Henry Fersko-Weiss, March 1st, 1989, Lotus Publishing Corp. Quotes Mark Bernstein: "In the next five to ten years," says Eastgate Systems' Bernstein, "hypertext will determine the way programs interact with people."
- ↑ Gutermann, Jimmy, 'Hypertext Before the Web,' Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1999 ("Thanks to some successful early attempts at hypertext fiction that Eastgate published (most notably by Michael Joyce and Stuart Moulthrop) and a front-page Robert Coover essay in the "New York Times Book Review," Eastgate and Storyspace were closely associated with the emerging field of literary hypertext.")
- ↑ Coover, Robert, 'And Hypertext Is Only the Beginning. Watch Out!' New York Times Book Review, August 29, 1993 ("...the primary source for serious hypertext fictions today is Eastgate Systems, the New Directions of electronic publishing and the supplier of the popular Storyspace software in which most of the hypertext authors I know about have written.")
- ↑ Rettberg, Scott (2019). Electronic literature. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. pp. 68–69. ISBN 978-1509516810. OCLC 1038024013.
- ↑ Murphy, Kim, 'Electronic Literature: Thinking Outside the Box,' Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2000; Zack, Ian, 'A Novel Approach to Literature,' The Roanoke Times, July 16, 1999.
- ↑ Denison, D.C. (December 9, 2001). "OnSite (column)". Boston Globe.
But how far can you push hypertext? That's the question that inspires Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein.... During most of the '80s and '90s, Bernstein devoted his energies to pushing the boundaries of hypertext fiction.
- ↑ "Tinderbox 1.2: multipurpose app sparks, stores, and shares ideas.(Product/Service Evaluation) - Macworld | HighBeam Research". www.highbeam.com. Archived from the original on 2011-05-16. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ Pamela Samuelson (Spring 1992). "Some new kinds of authorship made possible by computers and some intellectual property questions they raise". University of Pittsburgh Law Review. 53 (685). Note 45.
Interestingly, Storyspace is now being used as a hypertext system for a project in the state of Michigan to put judicial 'bench books' into electronic form.
- ↑ Landow, George P. (1992). Hypertext: the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 40
- ↑ Strange fiction by Jimmy Guterman, 05.23.97, Forbes.
- ↑ "Eastgate FAQ". Eastgate Systems.
- ↑ Bolter, Jay David; Joyce, Michael (1987-11-01). "Hypertext and creative writing". Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext - HYPERTEXT '87. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 41–50. doi:10.1145/317426.317431. ISBN 978-0-89791-340-9.
- ↑ Johnson, Steven. "Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext Story". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ "afternoon, a story | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ "Eastgate: Patchwork Girl". www.eastgate.com. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ Post, Colin; Hof-Mahoney, Kassidy (2024-10-03). "Eastgate Census: Tracking Legacy Literary Software Titles in Libraries, Archives, and Special Collections". Journal of Archival Organization. 21 (1–4): 28–54. doi:10.1080/15332748.2024.2407269. ISSN 1533-2748.
- ↑ Ensslin, Astrid (2022). Pre-web digital publishing and the lore of electronic literature. Cambridge elements publishing and book culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-90316-5.
- ↑ Coover, Robert (1993-08-29). "HYPERFICTION; And Hypertext Is Only the Beginning. Watch Out!". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ "Eastgate: serious hypertext". www.eastgate.com. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ "Eastgate: Hypertext Fiction". www.eastgate.com. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
- ↑ Barnet, Belinda (2012-10-26). "Machine Enhanced (Re)minding: the Development of Storyspace". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 006 (2). ISSN 1938-4122.
- ↑ Fallows, James (2015-03-09). "Interesting Software Update: Tinderbox How-To, Jerry's Brain". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ "reVIEWs: Koskimaa". www.altx.com. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
- ↑ "King of Space". Eastgate. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
- ↑ Malloy, Judy (1993). Its name was Penelope. Inc Eastgate Systems. Cambridge, MA: Eastgate Systems. ISBN 1-884511-07-4. OCLC 39034345.
- ↑ Guyer, Carolyn (1996). Quibbling. Inc Eastgate Systems. Cambridge, Mass.: Eastgate Systems. ISBN 1-884511-08-2. OCLC 47933641.
- ↑ "Victory Garden Sampler". www.eastgate.com. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
- ↑ "Victory Garden 2022 | Home". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
- ↑ "Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 2: Kathryn Cramer's "In Small & Large Pieces"". Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 2: Documenting Pre-Web Born Digital Media. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
- ↑ "Those Trojan Girls". Eastgate.
- ↑ "Judith Kerman | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
- ↑ "A Life Set for Two | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
- ↑ "True North | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
- ↑ "Intergrams | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
References
edit- Miller, Laura (March 15, 1998). "Bookend; www.claptrap.com". The New York Times. Retrieved on August 13, 2007.
- Guernsey, Lisa (April 15, 1999). "New York Times: New Kind of Convergence: Writers and Programmers". The New York Times. Retrieved on August 13, 2007.