Chip Morningstar is an author, academic and developer of software systems for online entertainment and communication. A University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 graduate, he participated in Project Xanadu

Project Xanadu

Project Xanadu was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it an improvement over the World Wide Web, with mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper...

, for which the word hypertext

Hypertext

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...

 was first coined. Later, he overhauled the chat environment known as The Palace

The Palace (computer program)

The Palace is a software program used to access graphical chat room servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop...

, allowing its user base to expand from 50,000 to one million users. In March 2001, the International Game Developers Association

International Game Developers Association

International Game Developers Association is the professional society for over 10,000 video and computer game developers worldwide.It is incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization....

 awarded Morningstar and Randy Farmer

Randy Farmer

F. Randall "Randy" Farmer has created and organized numerous online communities. He is probably most famous for his role creating one of the first graphical online MMOGs, Lucasfilm's graphical MUD Habitat, with Chip Morningstar...

 the "First Penguin Award" for their work on Lucasfilm

LucasArts

LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...

's Habitat

Habitat (video game)

Lucasfilm's Habitat was an early and technologically influential online role-playing game developed by Lucasfilm Games and made available as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to America Online...

, the first large-scale virtual environment intended for massively multiuser operation. He is also credited with coining the term avatar for an on-screen representation and pre-Internet work in online information marketplaces

American Information Exchange

The American Information Exchange was a platform for the buying and selling of information, goods and services as well as the exchange of information, ideas, and certain kinds of intellectual work product, created by economist and futurist Phil Salin in the 1980s.Starting in 1984, Salin worked to...

.

While at Lucasfilm, he authored Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM), the basis for many Lucas titles. Morningstar was co-founder/CTO at Communities.com

Communities.com

Communities.com is a non-commercial advertisement-free Internet social networking site that started in 1996 and is considered the first social network in the world. Also, it is one of the oldest social networks still operating.- History :...

 and later co-founded State Software, Inc., with Douglas Crockford

Douglas Crockford

Douglas Crockford is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur, best known for his ongoing involvement in the development of the JavaScript language, and for having popularized the data format JSON , and for developing JSLint...

, where he co-discovered the JSON

JSON

JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...

 Data Interchange format.

He is known for How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, an essay in which he presents a step-by-step procedure for deconstructing

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...

 any given text. This stemmed from the 1991 "Second International Conference on Cyberspace

Cyberspace

Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...

", at which he and Farmer gave a computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

-oriented presentation but received complex and daunting "lit crit

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

".

Morningstar currently resides in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

.

External links

• "Chip's site"
• "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat", by Morningstar and Farmer, presented at the First International Conference on Cyberspace (UT Austin
  University of Texas at Austin
  The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
  
  , May 1990). Published in Cyberspace: First Steps, Michael Benedikt
  Michael Benedikt
  Michael Benedikt is the 2004 ACSA Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Hal Box Chair in Urbanism. Benedikt directs the Center for American Architecture and Design.His works include:...
  
   (ed.), MIT Press 1991. ISBN 0-262-02327-X.
• Publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server
• "Making Java A Secure Programming Language", lecture Morningstar gave at Stanford University
  Stanford University
  The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
  
  
• "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything" (the version on the author's own website)
• Chip Morningstar at MobyGames
  MobyGames
  -Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...