''Electric Word'' was a bimonthly, English-language magazine published in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

between 1987 and 1990 that offered eclectic reporting on the translation industry, linguistic technology, and computer culture. Its editor was

Louis Rossetto Louis Rossetto is an Americans, American writer, editor, and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and former editor-in-chief / publisher of ''Wired magazine''. He was also the first investor and the former CEO of TCHO chocolate company. ...

and it featured avant-garde graphics by the Dutch graphic designer Max Kisman.

History and profile

In 1986, Amsterdam-based INK Taalservice, a high-tech translation company serving the new PC industry, launched an English-language magazine ''Language Technology'', which covered the burgeoning the technologies used to process language — from PCs to machine translation to networks.

was the editor of Language Technology.

Jane Metcalfe Jane Metcalfe is the co-founder, with Louis Rossetto, and former president of Wired Ventures, creator and original publisher of the magazine ''Wired''. Prior to that, Metcalfe managed advertising sales for the Amsterdam-based '' Electric Word'' ...

was the magazine's ad sales director. The first issue of ''Language Technology'' was designed by leading edge Dutch graphic designer Max Kisman. It was the first issue of any magazine to be created with desktop publishing software, in this case ReadySetGo, which Rossetto had carried back from its introduction at that year's San Francisco MacWorld exhibition. INK later sold the magazine to a small Dutch media company Media Nederland, who renamed it ''Electric Word''. ''Electric Words circulation grew to include leading research labs at universities, governments, and high tech companies around the world. Cover subjects were as diverse as computer visionary

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

, AI pioneer

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...

Timothy Leary Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...

, and

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

founder

Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...

. ''

Whole Earth Review ''Whole Earth Review'' (''Whole Earth'' after 1997) was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the '' Whole Earth Software Review'' (a supplement to the '' Whole Earth Software Catalog'') and the ''CoEvolution Quarterl ...

''’s editor Kevin Kelley proclaimed ''Electric Word'' "the least boring computer magazine in the world," which became its tagline. ''Electric Word'' was terminated in 1990 due to Media Nederland's change of focus. Rossetto and Metcalfe went on to found ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

'' magazine. The last issue of ''Electric Word'' featured the world's first photoshopped magazine cover — of TED founder

Richard Saul Wurman Richard Saul Wurman (born March 26, 1935) is an American architect and graphic designer. Wurman has written, designed, and published 90 books and created the TED conferences, the EG Conference, TEDMED, and the WWW Conference. Education and ho ...

References

External links

Electric Word online archive
1987 establishments in the Netherlands 1990 disestablishments in the Netherlands Defunct magazines published in the Netherlands Bi-monthly magazines published in the Netherlands Science and technology magazines published in the Netherlands English-language magazines Magazines established in 1987 Magazines disestablished in 1990 Magazines published in Amsterdam {{sci-mag-stub