This 29-year-old high-tech visionary hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with those around her. Back in 1990, when she decided to publish Electronic Hollywood, one of the first magazines on floppy disks, bookstores told her that her disks would flop. Instead, they sold out. In 1993, Levy created a computer press kit for Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk album, which included lyrics and biographical information with a strong emphasis on the graphical. In the past two years, it has been widely imitated. And this past June, she published the much-celebrated electronic novel, Ambulance by Monica Moran. After a brief stint creating interactive interfaces at IBM, Levy has gone global.

She brought together writers, musicians, animators, filmmakers and design artists in an attempt to change the reading experience. For example, a simple story about disc-jockeys became a visual mural of cyborg-like creatures that, when clicked-on with a mouse, offering a sampling of music from real DJs currently in vogue. Another piece called "Talking Painting" involved a poet reciting his poetry as we view an artist’s painted interpretations of the poems.

"My skill is integrating media in such a way as to create a new experience," explains the New York University graduate who now teaches at her alma mater when she’s not giving lectures at the Museum of Television and radio. In other words, in the world of Word, we don’t just read "See Spot Run," we have a three-dimensional encounter in which spot not only barks and bites, but in which you might want to carry a pooper-scooper. Just the thing you’d expect from someone who describes herself as "a young, educated, liberal humanoid."