HyperCard

And in the same way, like a flip book, right? Like, you know, you could do these things Do you

remember HyperCard,

the old

Mac thing? Yes, yes.

And they pretty quickly realized, oh shit, we can do way more here than just make an interactive children's book.

Because at the time, what they were using, and would also use for Myst, was a piece of software called HyperCard.

Right.

This is maybe the greatest piece of software ever made? Yeah.

Could have

been the World Wide Web.

Because HyperCard is basically a stack of digital cards.

And on each card, you have images, you have buttons, and you can click around on said card.

And each book is a different hypercard stack that was just something that this person found interesting.

The copy for it describes itself as like a hearty stew, which means that there's like different ingredients in it.

And each HyperCard stack is just a different experience, a different multimedia thing.

This was called multimedia back then.

And so there's one that's just like an essay by him about... about like scientific materialism and and certainty this the brian thomas was interested in mysticism christian mysticism and things and interested in in art and so uh there's an essay about that there's a little adventure game called meat and conversation which i really liked which which uh is a very simple adventure game where you play as a medieval monk on a feast day, which is the one day that the monks are allowed to talk, and you have to solve this little puzzle as you play it.

And this was something that I played when I was a kid and just kind of gave me a lot of sense of what's possible with interactive media.

1988 is so early in the history of like HyperCard and the Macintosh and just like multimedia in general.

Yeah.

So it just transforms the ability for anyone to use the full power of a computer.

And, and it actually reminds me of our late coworker, Bill Atkinson, and his vision at Apple with HyperCard.

And, and, and for me, that's what gets me really excited.

The, the notion that not only is it a means for people to become better educated in, in natural language, but actually to be able to create in natural language.

You know, it kind of is just, it just, it's hard to program on a Mac to an extent, unless you kind of know what you're doing.

Until this thing called HyperCard came out.

I don't know if you've ever heard of

HyperCard, but

HyperCard is a, was a, it was kind of an internet before the internet.

It was like a local, it was, I'm a big hypermedia guy.

so hypermedia is sort of you know what i'm studying i'm interested in to an extent or it's one of the

[laughs]

[laughs] HyperCard, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I met a few people, like Dan Olsen, who was one of my undergraduate professors, came out of Cranbrook.

Diane Gromala, who was there in the early '90s at UT, was really into technology, and she got me into all that early, early stuff like HyperCard and weird stuff like that.

And so when I was 22, it wasn't like I was a great designer or anything, and it wasn't like I was really had any...

I had done some internships, but I was really into the digital crossover, and I was really into, like, zines and making and silk screening and all those things.