| | 35 | About page will look that way:[[BR]] |
| | 36 | Sophie's Provenance |
| | 37 | |
| | 38 | Sophie's either sixteen years in the making or about four depending on whether you go back to the beginning or not. The beginning was at The Voyager Company, an early electronic publisher (The Criterion Collection, Robert Winter's [http://blip.tv/file/462073/ CD-Companion Series], [http://blip.tv/file/462077/ Who Built America], Pedro Meyer's [http://blip.tv/file/462119/ I Photograph to Remember] and Laurie Anderson's [http://blip.tv/file/462115/ Puppet Motel] etc.). Back in 1992 Voyager released the Expanded Books Toolkit ([http://www.futureofthebook.org/motion/D_ADAMS.mov explained by Douglas Adams]) which enabled people to make simple e-books without any programming. The first three titles were Martin Gardner's [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393048470?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0393048470 Annotated Alice], Douglas Adams' trilogy [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345391802?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345391802 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] and [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345370775?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345370775 Jurassic Park] (before it came out in paperback). The second three were Marge Piercy's [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0449215571?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0449215571 Gone to Soldiers], Susan Faludi's [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307345424?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307345424 Backlash] and perhaps the first text-based "double-feature" which paired Neil Postman's [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303653X?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014303653X Amusing Ourselves] to Death with Aldous Huxley's [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060850523?ie=UTF8&tag=httpimparde-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0060850523 Brave New World]. |
| | 39 | |
| | 40 | Shortly thereafter, Voyager Japan released T-2 which has gone on to become the leading ebook software in its home country. In 1996 a group of Voyager employees formed Night Kitchen with the intent of creating an authoring/reading environment that would extend the Expanded Books Toolkit concept to include rich media. The result TK3 never officially came to market, but teachers in high schools and colleges used it in their classrooms and with their students created some remarkable projects. |
| | 41 | |
| | 42 | The Mellon Foundation approached some of the TK3 team and asked them to build a new multimedia authoring program which would be open-source and would extend TK3 by enabling time-based events (e.g. a timed, narrated slide show or embedding links at specific points in video clips). That became Sophie. |
| | 43 | |
| | 44 | Funded over time by grants from the Mellon Foundation, McArthur Foundation and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Sophie is now an OpenSource community project with the support currently coming from the http://www.futureofthebook.org/ Institute for the Future of the Book], [http://www.impara.de/index_engl.html Impara] and the OpenSource community. |
