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This was actually the last issue. Quote from Louis Rossetto's editorial in this issue:
"We believe strongly that the world needs a magazine like Electric Word, one written not for the utterly mythical corporate CEO ready to buy 5,000 computers at a throw, but for the thinking computer user involved in the global revolution of information technology and word-crunching. We are very optimistic that the commercial potential of the least boring computer magazine in the world will attract new investors."
It did, but it took several years and a change of name, to Wired. That story has been written elsewhere.
Table of contents
- Access guide to Richard Saul Wurman by Jonathan Beard.
For 25 years, RSW has used his reserves of ignorance to help America understand itself better. As Jonathan Beard found out when he met the author, architect, cartographer, creative director of a design agency on each coast of the US, and chair of this year's epochal TED2 conferences, there's plenty more where that came from. - Help! by Colin Brace
When Ford consolidated its worldwide product design and engineering information into one huge online system, it created the world's largest private database. The problem: how to get everyone to use it without losing precious production time. The solution: create an online help system and interactive training modules. But how to translate all 72,000 help screens into four European languages? - The death of print by David Henry Goodstein
We know you've heard it before, but this time you better really pay attention. Electronic Media is about to wreak an astonishing transformation on the printing industry. The days of print are numbered – though this won't necessarily mean the end of paper. - The original cyberpunk: Tim Leary by Louis Stiller
Dr. Timothy Leary is converting his vision of a cyberdelic future, where people use thought appliances to free their own minds and change the world, into software reality. - Hacking the brain by Nick Beard
After a false dawn, neural networks are winning back an increasingly large slice of the research cake. Nick Beard reports how natural language processing is benefitting. - Writers right now by Jane Dorner
The British Library commissioned a survey of over a thousand writers to find out their use of and attitudes towards information technology and writing. The first report on the results of the survey, plus a poll of publishers, specially for Electric Word. - WordWorker: Nicholson Baker by Mark Reid
Former technical writer Nicholson Baker has become a cult phenomenon, with his first two novels drawing hot reviews.Language Technology
Stars
- Sue Atkins: The art of dictionary (co)building.
- Paul Brainerd revisited –the father of PageMaker
- Mike Ryan –author of Telos, a powerful new typesetting program for book production
Product news
- Gasps at DRUPA: Direct-to-paper press
- Scoop: First portable CD-I player
- Tower of Babbage
- Invasion of the CD-I snatchers
- Computer recognises typist
- Is your Mac making you stupid?
- Computer discovers Shakespeare's poems
- The active document
- Is it real, or is it MIT?
- Information Age already in museum
- Kapor backs free (electronic) speech
- Global language industries survey results
- Language revolution in Eastern Europe
- CD-I Japanese learning disk
- Russian tutor
- PC-KIMMO
- GENEric LEXicon de France
- New encyclopedia for linguists
Product reviews
- Feature this. The new round of Mac page makeup programs promise to do everything for you but give you a backrub. But will they really change the way you work?
- What you say is what you get. Speech recognition software for PC and Mac.
- I say, I say, I say, my computer's got no nose ... Humor Processor joke database
- Voyage round my thesauri (Language Master, Big Thesaurus)
- Style Wars I (Corporate voice)
- Term KILLER! (Trados)
- Zen and the art of marketing computers (The Macintosh Way, by Guy Kawasaki)
- Unravelling the infrastructure of a new technology. ("Natural language processing technologies in artificial intelligence –the Science and Industry Perspective")
- That old familiar feeling. ("Developing effective user documentatio: a human-factors approach")
- "Unofficial guide to the best (computer) games"