In 1994, at the TED 5 conference in Monterey, California, Cooper presented a collection of work that had been recently done by her students in the VLW. The demos demonstrated experiments in dynamic, interactive, computer-based typography, themes which Cooper had been exploring through much of her career. In 1978, had Cooper co-authored a "Books without Pages" proposal to the National Science Foundation to explore computer typography and computer workstations. Although the NSF declined to fund the project, she obtained support from the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a funding source later used by the Media Lab.