Active Storytelling

Abstract

People love to exchange stories. Stories provide a context for the events, feelings, ideas, and relationships that make up the fabric of our daily lives. When we describe an important experience in our life to another person, we often shape it in the form of a story. Stories are a means of communication. We are on the threshold of a revolutionary change in how people will communicate with each other and the environment. A global wireless communications network, coupled with computational devices that know where they are and are in contact with the network, will knit together individuals and groups in ways we have never seen before. These devices will employ speech recognition and synthesis, algorithms for vision understanding and graphic synthesis, and algorithms to extract meaning fromtext, images, and sounds. When these devices mature, they will be small, portable, wireless, and ubiquitous. They will have a deep impact on our cultures, and our stories.