The future of storytelling
This morning we were woken up by a call from Austria. Just a call to check up on us and inform us how the holiday is. Just a regular call, how are you? How is the weather?
This call made me think about storytelling. We live in a now culture. We share our finest moments live or short after we experienced them. We almost never have to compress a series of events in a story anymore.
My mobile phone keeps me up to date via RSS, sms and e-mail. I can post photos to Flickr, messages to Blogger and thoughts to Twitter. I can talk to someone live with sound or video. Always and everywhere. And there is not really a reason why you shouldn’t communicate with the people you like or love.
The main goal of our – cross platform – communication is keeping each other up to date. We are moving faster forward and communicating more than ever before. We don’t have to recapitulate things in a story. We report. And this is good, it makes us more progressive instead of conservative. We adapt new ways of communication faster than ever before. Make less mistakes and talk more.
All things good are bad. Will this culture focussed on the now eventually degrade our storytelling qualities? Will we loose the ability to tell a story in a linear structure with context over time? Will we still be able to set things in perspective of time or will storytelling end up as an art form?
We don’t archive in stories anymore, if we already manage to archive the enormous pile of information we just archive all of it. Because there is only a now we have to archive everything.
There is no space in time left to recapitulate and summarize things. Everything can be important. We don’t have to dispose because search helps us find the things we need when we want it. Why bother a summary if your answer is two clicks away?
What happens if we almost never have to tell a story again? Everything we do is continues reported to whoever we want and archived into databases. In a networked culture you don’t have to tell what you have been doing, if someone wants to know they just check up on you.
With the to be storytelling started, will it end with search?
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March 18 2007 @ 6:46 am
Hi
I am Javier, the founder of Trendirama.com, the fastest growing community of amateur writers writing about The Future of everything. We would like to invite you to join us and write an article on the website, perhaps “The future of storytelling” or on anything else you are passionate about…
It is up to you, you choose the subject.
You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish.
You can even re-use some of what you have here, in the last part of the article, “your view and comments”. That would save you time and still be interesting for readers.
And yes, I know you may not have the time. Theoretically, none of us do…;)
Failing that, if you like the project and you can help us spread the word -even if you don’t write- it would be great.
Since we are starting, any help is appreciated.
By making this valuable information available online for free, I truly believe we are helping to make the world a better place.
And you could do your bit for the world too, by sharing what you know, as we already do.
Please let us know if you link or mention us, so we can link you back too if you wish.
You can even use our valuable articles on your websites, provided that you link back. Any better offer than that?! :)
Look forward to hearing from you or reading your interesting article at Trendirama!
Best regards
Javier Marti
http://trendirama.com
March 31 2007 @ 10:34 am
Very interesting post, read it with interest. I recently read this piece from Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist, which is called Life As Narrative. What is basically explains is that when we tell about what we have done, we make a narrative selection. These selected parts are the ones that we use as a reference in our life. So, not the whole experience forms us, but the narrative created on the base of the experience.
Also found it on the web: http://www.plataforma.uchile.cl/fb/cursos_area/cognit/unidad2/tema2/doc/bruner_2004_lifeasnarrative.pdf
March 31 2007 @ 12:51 pm
@Twan, thanks for the link