Bob Stein presented Tapestry, a project that originated from his interest in finding ways to engage young people with historical content, particularly about early computer pioneers. As the creator of the Voyager Company (the first publisher of interactive media), Bob showed how Tapestry transforms traditional linear content into a 2D spatial interface where users can explore information more freely. Tapestry allows users to arrange content spatially on an “infinite canvas” with operating objects rather than links. Unlike traditional web navigation, Tapestry eliminates friction by letting users directly manipulate and interact with content objects (videos, documents, images) without navigating away. He demonstrated various tapestries he had created, including collections of historical videos about computer pioneers, museum exhibitions, film collections, and music videos. Bob emphasized how Tapestry enables different learning and exploration styles by allowing users to organize information spatially rather than linearly. The platform supports embedding from various sources (including the Internet Archive) and allows for easy sharing through embeddable frames on websites like WordPress. The project is being developed under the Internet Archive’s initiative and will soon enter beta testing. Bob stressed Tapestry’s value for education, curation, and publication, noting that teachers are already finding applications for it in classroom settings as an alternative to traditional essays, especially in an era of AI-generated content.
Bob Stein, Frode Hegland, Dene Grigar, Mark Anderson, Fabien Benetou, Tom Haymes, Peter Wasilko, Brandel Zachernuk, Rob Swigart, Leon van Kammen, and Karl Arthur Smink.
Summary of participants
Bob Stein is the creator of Tapestry and founder of the Voyager Company; Frode Hegland and Dene Grigar are Co-PIs on a Sloan Foundation-funded project about the future of text in XR; Mark Anderson is researching spatial hypertext; Fabien Benetou is developing WebXR tools; Tom Haymes is an educator interested in visualization tools; Peter Wasilko is conducting research on World’s Fairs; Brandel Zachernuk is an XR developer; Rob Swigart formerly worked at the Institute for the Future; Leon van Kammen is a developer; and Karl Arthur Smink’s role is unknown. AI: Summary This meeting of the Future of Text Symposium featured a presentation by Bob Stein on his Tapestry project, an innovative spatial interface for arranging and exploring content developed as an initiative of the Internet Archive. Stein, founder of the Voyager Company (the first publisher of interactive media), demonstrated how Tapestry transforms linear content into a 2D spatial interface that allows users to freely organize and interact with content objects. The system enables multiple exploration styles and reduces friction in information navigation by presenting “operating objects” rather than links.
Following Stein’s presentation, Fabien Benetou demonstrated his work on a spatial interface for VR/AR that included unfolding 3D cubes and keyboard integrations, while Frode Hegland shared conceptual slides exploring the possibilities of cubes as information containers in spatial computing. The discussion touched on themes of spatial hypertext, the relationship between physical and virtual spatial arrangements, collaboration in academic work, and the need for more intuitive information visualization tools that transcend traditional web paradigms.
AI: Speaker Summary
Bob Stein: Bob presented Tapestry, a project he’s developing with the Internet Archive, describing it as “what the internet was going to be.” He demonstrated how it transforms linear content into spatial arrangements, allowing different exploration styles through direct manipulation of “operating objects” rather than links. Bob showed various Tapestry examples including collections about computer pioneers, museum exhibitions, and music. He emphasized its ease of use, embeddability, and educational applications, noting how teachers are using it as an alternative to traditional assignments in the AI era. Bob was excited about the potential for Tapestry to enable collaborative work and extend digital publishing beyond linear constraints.
Dene Grigar: Dene served as the moderator and showed particular interest in the preservation aspects of Tapestry, asking important questions about its open-source nature and sustainability. She compared it to previous platforms like Muse and iWeb that were killed by their corporate owners, emphasizing the importance of using technologies that don’t require constant preservation efforts. Dene was concerned about template-bound systems and code accessibility for long-term viability, noting her experience with Skylar becoming inaccessible despite having the code.
Frode Hegland: Frode showed enthusiasm for Tapestry’s intuitive interface design, calling it “so bloody obvious” and “what it should have been in the world.” He presented conceptual slides exploring how information could be organized in 3D “cubes” in spatial computing environments, considering how these might unfold, connect, and relate to each other. Frode reflected on a realization about spatial order being a deliberate decision rather than accidental, connecting this insight to both Tapestry and XR work.
Mark Anderson: Mark focused on the spatial hypertext aspects of the presentations, noting connections to work by Scott McCloud. He is writing a paper on spatial hypertext for the hypertext conference and discussed how Tapestry relates to this field. Mark suggested that the number of “cube sides” in a spatial interface likely connects to the number of ways one needs to interact with knowledge objects, and mentioned consulting with Frank Shipman and Kathy Marshall about early 1990s work in this area.
Fabien Benetou: Fabien demonstrated his own spatial interface for VR/AR that included features like unfolding 3D cubes, customizable backgrounds, and keyboard integration with hand tracking. He showed how his wiki system allows for arranging and organizing sketches and content in spatial layouts. Fabien was particularly interested in the power of “moving things around on the web” and how physical metaphors could be extended in virtual spaces.
Tom Haymes: Tom showed great interest in using Tapestry for his government class where students identify social problems and develop policy solutions. He discussed how the platform could help students create more visual presentations rather than traditional essays that are vulnerable to AI generation. Tom emphasized the need for visual narrative devices to enable truly collaborative dissertations, and described his interest in creating a “serendipity machine” to discover unexpected connections between ideas.
Peter Wasilko: Peter expressed interest in using Tapestry for organizing his World’s Fairs research and asked practical questions about access to the beta version. He raised concerns about copyright issues and emulation, suggesting that Congress should make the duplication of ROMs from defunct hardware products an explicit Fair Use exemption under copyright law.
Brandel Zachernuk: Brandel proposed using Tapestry’s spatial layout to represent temporal information, suggesting visual signage indicating document clusters as “Day 1”, “Day 2”, etc. He discussed the tension between formalism and convention in interface design, noting how systems like Photoshop use formal structures (layers) that gain conventional meanings through use.
Rob Swigart: Rob raised questions about the transition from traditional academic writing to more spatial representations, wondering how future researchers would access and build upon work created in these new formats. He also mentioned that when he worked at the Institute for the Future, “groupware” was a common topic for collaborative work, and noted that collaboration is being reconsidered as a “post-capitalist” approach according to the Houston Foresight Group.
Leon van Kammen: Leon briefly mentioned being inspired by the presentation, particularly appreciating how the copy-paste functionality with archive.org worked, expressing that this is how he would “love to see more things work on the web.”
Karl Arthur Smink: Karl commented on educational platforms like Canvas and Blackboard, noting that their biggest problem is that “no one knows how to use it, no one can troubleshoot it,” resulting in wasted potential. He also commented that he “can’t think of a single dissertation that involved one person,” suggesting the inherently collaborative nature of academic work.
AI: Topics Discussed
WebXR Fabien Benetou demonstrated his work on a WebXR interface showing a cube that can be unfolded and manipulated in VR/AR space. He showed how the cube could be expanded to fill the size of a room, folded back, and moved around. Fabien also demonstrated keyboard integration with hand tracking in VR where pressing shift would turn his hand green, allowing modifiers in virtual environments. Dene Grigar mentioned that her lab uses WebXR rather than Unity or Unreal Engine for VR experiences to avoid proprietary technologies. Gestures Fabien Benetou demonstrated integrating physical keyboard input with hand tracking in VR, where pressing the shift key would change his virtual hand color to green, creating a visual indicator of modifier key usage. This approach combines the precision of physical keyboard input with the spatial advantages of hand tracking in VR.
Book There were no direct discussions about a book project in this transcript, though Bob Stein did mention his work with expanding books into digital formats at Voyager, including electronic books with features still not available in modern e-readers.
Timelines Mark Anderson referenced two books on visualizing time-oriented data: Rosenberg & Grafton’s “Cartographies of Time” and Aigner et al’s “Visualization Of Time-Oriented Data.” Tom Haymes suggested that a 4D experience allowing the display of time would be valuable, potentially as a substitute for the third dimension in some applications. Brandel Zachernuk proposed making tapestries conventionally temporal by using visual signage to indicate clusters of documents as “Day 1”, “Day 2”, etc.
Spatial Hypertext: Mark Anderson mentioned he’s writing a paper on spatial hypertext for the hypertext conference. He noted that Tapestry seems related to spatial hypertext as it has no visible links or lines telling users where to go, but contains semantics in the spatial layout. Frode Hegland commented that Tapestry was “getting scarily close to spatial hypertext.”
Open Source and Preservation: Dene Grigar expressed concerns about the sustainability and accessibility of Tapestry’s code, comparing it to previous platforms like Adobe Muse and Apple’s iWeb that were discontinued. She emphasized the importance of using technologies that can be preserved long-term without proprietary dependencies.
Educational Applications: Tom Haymes and Bob Stein discussed how Tapestry could be used in educational settings. Bob shared an anecdote about a professor at the University of Amsterdam who planned to use Tapestry as an alternative to written papers that students might create with ChatGPT. Instead, students would assemble source documents, explain their choices, and show connections between them.
Collaboration in Academic Work: Bob Stein expressed interest in helping “midwife the first dissertation that is one dissertation by two people,” suggesting that tools like Tapestry could enable more collaborative academic publishing. Karl Smink commented that he “can’t think of a single dissertation that involved one person,” acknowledging the inherently collaborative nature of academic work.
Copyright and Emulation: Discussions touched on issues of copyright with older media and software. Peter Wasilko suggested that Congress should make the duplication of ROMs from defunct hardware products an explicit Fair Use exemption.
Information Visualization and Exploration: Bob Stein described Tapestry as creating the “first credible digital bookshelf” that recreates the serendipitous exploration possible in library stacks. Discussions touched on integrating AI to help navigate large collections of information.
Dimensionality in Information Display: Bob Stein observed that books and movies are essentially one-dimensional (moving only forward in time), while Tapestry adds a second dimension (x and y axes). Frode Hegland extended this to exploring three-dimensional “cube” metaphors for organizing information in XR.
AI: Concepts Introduced
Tapestry: Defined by Bob Stein as a project from the Internet Archive that allows users to arrange content spatially on an “infinite canvas” with “operating objects” rather than links. It transforms traditionally linear content into a 2D spatial interface where users can explore information more freely.
Operating Objects: Introduced by Bob Stein as elements in Tapestry that users can directly interact with, as opposed to links that take users to another page. These objects reduce the friction of navigation by functioning directly in the space.
Digital Bookshelf: Bob Stein described Tapestry as creating “the first credible digital bookshelf” because it allows users to browse through collections with the same serendipitous experience as physical library stacks, where books are immediately accessible rather than requiring clicks to access. Spatial Hypertext: Referenced by Mark Anderson and Frode Hegland as systems where the spatial arrangement of information carries meaning without explicit connecting lines or visible links.
Dimensionality of Media: Bob Stein introduced the concept that traditional media like books and films are essentially one-dimensional (with only time as the axis), while Tapestry adds a second dimension with its spatial layout, suggesting potential for future three-dimensional implementations.
Order as Decision: Frode Hegland described the realization that spatial order represents intentional decisions rather than accidental arrangement, noting how this applies to both physical spaces (like Fabien arranging magazines) and digital ones like Tapestry.
N-faced Cube: Mark Anderson suggested this term for information objects in XR that might have more than the traditional six sides of a physical cube, allowing for additional perspectives on digital content.
Serendipity Machine: Tom Haymes described his desire to create a tool that could help discover unexpected connections between ideas and information sources, allowing researchers to find parallels in their work.
AI: Notes for Claude
The AI assistant “Claude” was mentioned once in the transcript, by Bob Stein: “I decided to ask Claude to Google bots, meta Perplexity and Microsoft bing some questions and I asked them first, tell me what you know about the role of the German industrialists in supporting Hitler and the Third Reich.”
AI: People Mentioned
Alan Kay, mentioned by Bob Stein as creating a film homage to Vannevar Bush that showcased early computer pioneers, Bob Stein, mentioned by Dene Grigar as the creator of the first publishing company for interactive media, Vannevar Bush, mentioned by Bob Stein as being honored in Alan Kay’s film and by Tom Haymes as one of the early pioneers many CS people don’t know about, Engelbart (Doug Engelbart), mentioned by Bob Stein as one of the pioneers featured in Alan Kay’s film and shown in a Tapestry demonstration, also mentioned by Tom Haymes as one of the early pioneers many CS people don’t know about and by Frode Hegland referring to his demo with free-form mapping, Marvin Minsky, mentioned by Bob Stein as appearing in a Voyager electronic book project where he walked around on the page explaining his ideas, also mentioned by Tom Haymes as one of the early pioneers many CS people don’t know about, Bill Gates, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing how the narrative around computing shifted from social good to making money, Michael Dell, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing how the narrative around computing shifted from social good to making money, Robert Winter, mentioned by Bob Stein as creating “CD companions” at Voyager, Jim Sheldon, mentioned by Bob Stein as an artist who had access to Muybridge’s folio and animated his still images, Muybridge, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a videodisc project about his work and a UCLA class project about Rebecca Solnit’s book on Muybridge, Rebecca Solnit, mentioned by Bob Stein as the author of “River of Shadows” about Muybridge, Mark Zuckerberg, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing AI responses about parallels between German industrialists and modern tech leaders, Elon Musk, mentioned by Bob Stein when quoting Meta’s AI response about parallels between German industrialists and modern tech leaders, Sun Ra, mentioned by Bob Stein when demonstrating how to build a tapestry about a museum exhibit, John Coney, mentioned by Bob Stein as making a film about Sun Ra called “Space is the Place”, Brenda Laurel, mentioned by Bob Stein as his colleague at Atari Research who helped create scenarios about the “Encyclopedia of the future”, Brewster Kahle, mentioned by Bob Stein as being with him in Amsterdam for demonstrations and as being involved with the Internet Archive which is developing Tapestry, Virginia Kuhn, mentioned by Bob Stein as someone he helped to do her dissertation in electronic format at USC, Frank Shipman, mentioned by Mark Anderson as someone he’s talking to about spatial hypertext from the early 90s, Kathy Marshall, mentioned by Mark Anderson as someone he’s talking to about spatial hypertext from the early 90s, Claus Atsenbeck, mentioned by Dene Grigar as working on a project with similar features to Tapestry, Peter Bishop, mentioned by Tom Haymes as being associated with the Houston Foresight Group, Scott McCloud, mentioned by Mark Anderson and Tom Haymes for his work on comics and visualization, particularly “Understanding Comics” and his web comics series “I Can’t Stop Thinking”, Eric Lawyer, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a friend who worked on Skylar, Tara McPherson, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a friend who worked on Skylar, Dijkstra, mentioned by Fabien Benetou as an example of someone in computer science who might not know about early pioneers like Engelbart, Janis Joplin, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a music video collection, John Ray, mentioned by Bob Stein as an artist who made music videos in the 70s before MTV existed, Anselm Kiefer, mentioned by Bob Stein as an artist whose exhibit he visited in Amsterdam, Donald Trump, mentioned in the election_info section as having won the 2024 US Presidential election, Kamala Harris, mentioned in the election_info section as having lost the 2024 US Presidential election, Terry Ehling, mentioned by Bob Stein as someone at MIT Press who commissioned articles on generative AI that he made into a tapestry, Ted Nelson, mentioned by Tom Haymes as one of the early pioneers many CS people don’t know about and by Frode Hegland as inspiration for connected cubes concept, Licklider, mentioned by Tom Haymes as one of the early pioneers many CS people don’t know about, Hitler, mentioned by Bob Stein in context of asking AI systems about German industrialists supporting the Third Reich.
AI: Product or Company Names Mentioned
Voyager Company, mentioned by Bob Stein and Dene Grigar as the first publishing company for interactive media founded by Bob Stein, Criterion, mentioned by Bob Stein as an interactive media company he was involved with before Voyager, Internet Archive, mentioned by Bob Stein as the organization behind the Tapestry project, CD-ROMs, mentioned by Frode Hegland as “the worst medium created by mankind for knowledge” and by Bob Stein when discussing Voyager’s interactive media projects, DVDs, mentioned by Frode Hegland alongside CD-ROMs as a “frozen medium”, HyperCard, mentioned by Bob Stein as the platform Voyager used for many of its interactive projects, Microsoft Bing, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing asking AI systems about German industrialists, Meta (Facebook), mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing Zuckerberg removing guardrails and AI responses about German industrialists, Claude (Anthropic), mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing asking AI systems about German industrialists, Google bots, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing asking AI systems about German industrialists, Perplexity, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing asking AI systems about German industrialists, ChatGPT, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a professor who couldn’t assign papers anymore because students use it, Adobe Muse, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a program from the 2000s that Adobe killed, Apple iWeb, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a drag-and-drop technology that depended heavily on templates, National Science Foundation (NSF), mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a friend who works there but hadn’t heard of Alan Kay, Atari, mentioned by Bob Stein as where he and Brenda Laurel worked on the “Research Group”, WordPress, mentioned by Bob Stein when demonstrating embedding a tapestry in a blog, UCLA, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a design class that made handmade copies of Solnit’s book, BBC, mentioned by Bob Stein when showing a tapestry about the Sight and Sound film polls, Sight and Sound magazine, mentioned by Bob Stein when showing a tapestry about film polls, MIT Press, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing making a tapestry of articles on generative AI, University of Amsterdam, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing a professor who plans to use Tapestry instead of assigning papers, University of Wisconsin, mentioned by Bob Stein as the institution that accepted Virginia Kuhn’s electronic dissertation, USC, mentioned by Bob Stein as where Virginia Kuhn worked and by Dene Grigar as hosting the Skylar server, SheepShaver, mentioned by Peter Wasilko as software that can run old Mac software, TextSniper, mentioned by Mark Anderson as an app he uses, Notebook LM, mentioned by Tom Haymes as a tool he’s been trying to use for similar purposes to Tapestry, Canvas, mentioned by Karl Smink and Tom Haymes as an educational platform that people don’t know how to use properly, Blackboard, mentioned by Karl Smink alongside Canvas as an educational platform with problems, Moodle, mentioned by Karl Smink alongside Canvas and Blackboard as an educational platform with problems, Princeton, mentioned by Tom Haymes when referencing a book about copyright, Miro, mentioned by Tom Haymes as a tool he uses in live instruction, Unity, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a proprietary technology her lab avoids for VR development, Unreal Engine, mentioned by Dene Grigar alongside Unity as a proprietary technology her lab avoids, WebXR, mentioned by Dene Grigar as what her lab uses instead of Unity or Unreal, Flash, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a technology mistake she wants to avoid repeating, Skylar, mentioned by Dene Grigar as a system that became inaccessible despite having the code, Institute for the Future, mentioned by Bob Stein as where his “Future of the Book” project started and by Rob Swigart as where he worked, Institute for the Future of the Book, mentioned by Dene Grigar as Bob Stein’s organization, Houston Foresight Group, mentioned by Rob Swigart as a futurist think tank discussing collaboration as post-capitalist, Vision Pro, mentioned by Bob Stein as a device he’s excited to use with Tapestry, New York Times, mentioned by Rob Swigart as publishing an article about moving back to a “zero sum game world”, The Voyager Company, mentioned by Bob Stein as his former company that published interactive media, Photoshop, mentioned by Brandel Zachernuk when discussing formalism versus convention in interface design, Go Live, mentioned by Frode Hegland when asking about HTML export from authoring tools, MTV, mentioned by Bob Stein when discussing John Ray’s music videos created before MTV existed.
AI: Other
It’s notable how this meeting bridged historical perspectives on interactive media with current and future directions. Bob Stein’s work with Voyager in the 1980s-90s connects directly to current experiments in spatial interfaces like Tapestry and the WebXR work being done by members of this group. There’s a strong thread of concern about preservation and accessibility of digital media over time, with Dene Grigar particularly focused on avoiding technologies that might disappear or become inaccessible. The discussions reveal tension between linear and spatial approaches to information, with participants exploring how spatial arrangements might better serve certain types of thinking and collaboration. There’s also significant interest in how these new interfaces might transform education and academic work, potentially offering alternatives to traditional writing assignments that are vulnerable to AI generation. The meeting demonstrated a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, with participants coming from backgrounds in publishing, academia, software development, and design, all contributing different perspectives on spatial information arrangement and interaction.
Chat Log URLs
https://fit.princeton.edu/publications/who-owns-sentence-history-copyrights-and-wrongs
https://ideaspaces.net/unshacklinginnovation/ https://tapestries.asteasolutions.net/t/00f5832a-2935-4cfc-8c7a-6225d330e86c
https://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/icst/icst-6/icst-6.html
https://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/icst/icst-4/icst-4.html https://fabien.benetou.fr/RemarkableSketchesForWhiteboard/RemarkableSketchesForWhiteboard?action=whiteboard https://fabien.benetou.fr/Wiki/MetaWhiteboard?action=whiteboard
https://www.oedb.org/ilibrarian/5-free-and-open-source-tools-for-creating-digital-exhibitions/
https://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/index.html https://ideaspaces.net/unifinishedevolution/ https://video.benetou.fr/w/rYaU2eGMsFwFMABtZ2GJ13
AI Chat Log Summary
The chat log reveals additional context and side conversations during the main presentation. Participants shared numerous resource links, including tools for emulation (SheepShaver), articles on copyright, spatial hypertext examples from Scott McCloud, and demos of Fabien’s whiteboard tools. There were discussions about the limitations of educational platforms like Canvas and Blackboard, reminiscences about CD-ROMs as a technology from the 90s, and concerns about copyright restrictions limiting innovation and knowledge sharing. Several participants expressed frustration with the lack of knowledge about computing pioneers among computer science professionals and students. Tom Haymes noted that many CS people have no idea who Bush, Engelbart, Kay, Nelson, and Licklider are, which he sees as problematic because “no one understands ‘why’ if they don’t” know this history. Mark Anderson shared bibliographic references for books on visualization, including Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” and works on time-oriented data visualization. Participants also discussed the challenges of preservation, with Peter Wasilko suggesting that Congress should make ROM duplication for defunct hardware a Fair Use exemption. The chat served as a backchannel for scheduling followup demonstrations, with Fabien Benetou sharing links to his projects and recording of the session. Overall, the chat complemented the main discussion by providing resources, technical details, and side observations that enriched the conversation about spatial interfaces and information visualization.