Bob Stein

Bob Stein is the Chairman of Night Kitchen, a company dedicated to developing a new class of authoring tools for the next generation of electronic publishing. With these tools, complex multimedia documents can be assembled without a programmer, lowering costs, reducing development time, and most importantly, allowing authors and artists much more direct involvement in the creative process.

Stein was the founder of The Voyager Company, where for 13 years he led the development of over 300 titles in The Criterion Collection, a series of definitive films on videodisc, and more than 75 CD Rom titles.

In an age of digital euphoria, Stein has argued the profound impact of the new technologies on human communication, but sharply challenges the view that technology itself is the engine of human progress. ìPeople themselves are the real agents of social transformation. Technology is merely a tool, one that surely shapes human consciousness, but must ultimately be wielded by the best
wisdom the species can acquire.

This speaker will participate in the Tools for Cross-Fertilization and Interactivity panel.