Producer of the first interactive computer discs for CD-ROM, Stein is considered a visionary and innovator in the world of communication and multimedia. Born and raised in New York City, Stein attended Columbia University, majoring in psychology. Later, he earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University. He worked with Alan Kay at the Atari Research Group and was a consultant to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
He founded The Voyager Company in 1984. The Voyager Company, which takes its name from the spacecraft, produced laserdiscs of classic and contemporary films, and in 1987 produced the first interactive computer discs for Hypercard. In 1988 it produced Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, considered the very first commercial CD-ROM. It also produced The Criterion Collection, a collection of definitive films on digital media with in-depth background information, including the first films with recorded audio commentary. Voyager's catalogue of interactive CD-ROM and Laserdisc titles established it as one of the leading multimedia publishers.
After Voyager, Stein founded Night Kitchen to develop authoring tools for experimental electronic publishing, primarily TK3. He has served as director of the Institute for the Future of the Book. He has maintained, "The Institute has two principal activities. One is building high-end tools for making complex electronic documents (part of the Mellon Foundation's higher-ed digital infrastructure initiative). The other is exploring and hopefully influencing the evolution of new forms of intellectual expression and discourse."
This new scholarly direction was explored under the umbrella of and in partnership with MediaCommons, an in-development all-electronic scholarly publishing network in media studies.
