Jay David Bolter (born August 17, 1951) is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some of his main points of study include the evolution of media, the usage of technology in education, and the role of computers in the writing process. Brian Eno has referred to Bolter as "the new Gutenberg." [1]
Contents |
Bolter received his B.A. degree in Greek from Trinity College, in the University of Toronto, in 1973. In 1977 and 1978 he received his Ph.D. in Classics and an M.S. in Computer Science, both from the University of North Carolina.
Bolter received a number of prominent fellowships throughout his studies. They included a fellowship at Yale University, Cornell University, Universitat Göttingen, and a fellowship with the American Council of Learned Societies.
From 1979 until 1991, Jay David Bolter held a number of different faculty positions at the University of North Carolina. In 1991 he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he remains today.
Along with John B. Smith and Michael Joyce, Bolter co-created Storyspace, a software program for creating, editing, and displaying hypertext fiction. It was developed to support hypertext fiction in particular, although it can also be used for organizing and writing fiction and non-fiction intended for print.
Some of the notable hypertext fictions created in Storyspace include: Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.
Bolter has used Storyspace to revise several of his own books. More importantly, Storyspace provides facilities for writing and editing, which includes a map of the structure of the links, making it accessible for new users. Storyspace is currently being developed by Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems.