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 technologies used to process language — from PCs to machine translation to networks.
Louis Rossetto was the editor, and
Jane Metcalfe 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 Word's 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, AI pioneer
Marvin Minsky,
Timothy Leary, and
MIT Media Lab founder
Nicholas Negroponte.
Whole Earth Review’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 magazine. The last issue of
Electric Word featured the world's first photoshopped magazine cover — of TED founder
Richard Saul Wurman ==References==