What is Text Science?

Today Text Science is simply Michael Leventhal, this website and my activites, professional and intellectual. In 1994 Text Science was Text Science, Inc., the company I founded. Text Science, Inc. developed very early collaborative applications for the World Wide Web and consulted, eventually around the world, on the use of XML on the web and in desktop publishing systems. In addition to Michael Leventhal Text Science was Scott Chiang, Hoa Chan Quach, Gene Kan, Marc Ganilsy, and Marianne Brossard.

The name Text Science was dreamed up by me based on the idea of applying rigor, formalism, and science to the propagation of knowledge which, in my view, is predominately the written word, text. While media certainly has had a place in my work I believe that human beings are, above all, about language and that the written word is the basis of civilization and our future. XML is a concrete expression of a formalism of extreme utility for the propagation of knowledge. The name Text Science also contains a private reference to someone that I loved and still love and abandoned. The most exquisite uses of language speak on multiple levels and may mix public and private meanings.

My career has taken me in other directions for a time, although XML has remained a leitmotif. I am in the process of somewhat reviving Text Science as a vehicle for my thoughts as well as my professional activities, but this time in a broader context of all intellectual activities that interest me aligned with all the meanings of Text Science.