As scientists and archeologists discover human footprints dating back to 3,000 years inevitably along the ancient human presence they also discover the presence of stories. Whether it is a cave drawing or a clay or stone tablet, these artifacts keep the record of existence, customs, culture, or according to R. I. M. Dunbar (2004) even gossip. Regardless of the medium, language, symbols or age, humans have been compelled to record what is happening around them from what seems to be the beginning of time. The records range from direct accounts of for goods exchange as in many ancient Egyptian clay tablets from the Bronze Age,
the intricate accounts of a battle as in writings of Greek biographer Plutarch in 100 AD,
to present day’s recorded accounts of lives of regular people on video blogs.
Stories first and foremost are records of our existence.
But the recording is not the only way we tell stories. There are other narratives that take us to somewhere else: places unimaginable, places that we would not have visited otherwise. These places are filled with villains and saints, lovers and haters, heroes and cowards — characters we might never have met in our everyday life and that often have nothing to do with our everyday life. We love them or hate them, we cry or laugh with them, we learn from their mistakes and in the process of following their lives, we also discover who we are. From Gilgamesh
to Wilbur,
these characters help us put our own lives in perspective and even make our own life’s decisions based on what we have discovered/learned from their narratives. As Cody C. Delistraty (2014) postulates in his article The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling, “humans are inclined to see narratives … because it can afford meaning to our lives, a form of existential problem-solving.”
But as we move through history, it seems that with technological advancements in society the ways we tell and experience stories change. The miracle of technology, be it a printing press or photo or video camera alters not only ways that stories are told, but the way the audience experiences them. In his seminal work, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (1936) points out that
the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire existence. The manner in which human sense and perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.
In this essay, he was referring to film and photography, the first major technological advancements that affected storytelling since the invention of the printing press. With the invention of the printing press the number of readers has increased dramatically (and I suspect the tradition of oral storytelling has lessened) but also the population of readers has changed. The stories still had the beginning, middle, and the end. The stories still had the five components: the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. But once the book production became less expensive the books became available to the general population, the working class people, the stories spread quicker (Dittmar, 2009).
With the invention of film and photography, the stories took on a visual form. For the first time, the stories came alive according to the interpretation of others: film directors, camera directors, screenwriters, and actors. The role of the audience changed from readers with imagination to passive consumers. And that role stayed the same through the Television age (Shirky, 2010). Then came the Internet. Which brings me to what I think is the main distinction between the traditional storytelling and the digital one.
Beyond the fact that stories now created using digital technology, the most important distinction, in my opinion, is the fact that digital storytelling became participatory. Technology once again altered the role of the audience. The structure and elements of the story stayed the same but technology has enabled the audience to change from passive consumer to that of a participant. Technology allowed the audience to interact with the characters and the story itself (Alter, 2016). For the first time, the audience is able to choose their own ending to the story,
make decisions for the characters (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1kWsQcfTPFjfz9sdxfTGFhC/our-world-war-interactive-episode), and interact with the narrative directly (http://hunchfilm.com/). Furthermore, for the first time, the audience has a capability to rewrite and alter the stories themselves through remixing them or combining them with their own stories: https://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/08/08/mixbit-is-a-new-video-remix-app-from-youtube-co-founders-steve-chen-and-chad-hurley/#.tnw_NJYhIpwZ
because as Shirky (2010) put it, “when you buy a machine that lets you consume digital content, you also buy a machine to produce it.”
As technology develops further, I am sure the storytelling will continue to adjust to it. The next reiteration seems to take a direction towards a complete audience emersion into the story through Virtual Reality (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/magazine/virtual-reality.html). It’s exciting and also telling that the storytelling will never go away as it is an inherent part of who we humans are.
References:
Alter, A. (2016, January 3). New Julian Fellow project, ‘Belgravia,’ treads new digital ground [Web Log message]. Retrieved January 4, 2016 from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/business/media/new-julian-fellowes-project-belgravia-treads-new-digital-ground.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
Benjamin, W. (2015). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations. London: The Bodley Head.
Delistraty, C. C. (2014, November 02). The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling. Retrieved June 26, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-psychological-comforts-of-storytelling/381964/
Jeremiah E. Dittmar; Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press . Q J Econ 2011; 126 (3): 1133-1172. doi: 10.1093/qje/qjr035
Dunbar, R. I. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 100-110. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.100
Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. East Rutherford: Penguin Press.
While your narrative tends to look at storytelling mainly from the point of view of the consumer/reader/listener, it still does a fine job of putting storytelling into an historical context that underscores the basic need for humans to tell stories as a way to create order and understand the world.
I agree with your basic assertion that digital storytelling differs from traditional storytelling in the extent to which the audience may become more personally involved in the process. I think there are other distinctions as well, but the change from passive consumer to potential actor or influencer is a profound one, and one that has never been so easily accessible by so many people. In that sense, it will be interesting to see how virtual reality changes the nature of interaction and participation. Clearly it will be more immersive, and in that sense it will be more participatory, but it’s also likely that the tools for creating stories in the VR space will be expensive and complicated, at least at first. Shirky was correct in his assertion that digital tools allow not just consumption of digital stories but also their creation and distribution. Will that be the same with VR? At this point, VR content creation is the purview of studios and professionals. While consumers will be able to interact with and participate in VR stories, they may not be able to create them as easily. Will our future experiences with storytelling be one of mass consumption and not creation and distribution, as Shirky suggested regarding television? Time will tell, obviously, and it will be interesting to see how things develop.
Skip, thank you for a very thoughtful comment. I chose to narrow my narrative around the role of the audience because I think it is an important change that is often overlooked not only in research about digital storytelling but also in education. We tend to see digital storytelling still in terms of the importance of constructing the narrative in a linear way and dismissing the audience participation. At best, we teach our student to consider who our potential audience is, at worse we just heavily rely on video as a tool. I agree, there are other distinctions between the traditional storytelling and the digital one. For once, technology offers us an incredible opportunity not only create our narratives in a multimodal way but also as branching scenarios.
I am excited about VR and AR maybe because I read too much William Gibson and maybe because I think it will offer even a greater shift in the tradition of the storytelling. I also see a tremendous potential of this technology for an online education (health professions for example). But you are absolutely right about this technology being available only to an exclusive group who can either afford it or who are in a film industry. I have high hopes though that with time it will be just as widespread and accessible as web 2.0. But as far as the way we will use it greatly depends on how we educate our students to use it. It is up to us to facilitate the culture of participation rather than consuming.