Robert Stein

" For the photographer, see Robert B. Stein"

Robert Stein (born April 20, 1946) founded The Voyager Company, the first commercial CD-ROM publisher, and The Criterion Collection a collection of definitive films on digital media with in-depth background information (including the first films with recorded audio commentary).

Born and raised in New York City, Stein attended Columbia University, majoring in psychology. Later, he earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University.

Stein then worked with Alan Kay at the Atari Research Group on various electronic publishing projects.

After Voyager, Stein founded Night Kitchen to develop authoring tools for experimental electronic publishing, primarily TK3.

Stein is the director for the Institute for the Future of the Book. According to Stein: "The Institute has two principal activities. One is building high-end tools for making complex electronic documents (part of the Mellon Foundation's higher-ed digital infrastructure initiative). The other is exploring and hopefully influencing the evolution of new forms of intellectual expression and discourse." This new scholarly direction is being explored under the umbrella of MediaCommons.

External links

* [http://www.edge.org/digerati/stein/ Robert Stein by John Brockman]
* [http://www.thisspartanlife.com/1001_mod3.html Bob Stein interviewed on This Spartan Life] , August 2005
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/stein_pr.html "The Teachings of Bob Stein"] , Wired Magazine, July 1996
* [http://www.futureofthebook.org/ The Institute for the Future of the Book]
* [http://www.futureofthebook.org/ if:book] , the Institute for the Future of the Book weblog
* [http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/ MediaCommons]