Story Networks: 'The medium is the message'; The content, your souvenir

Abstract

Storytelling -- a fundamental mode of human communication -- has adapted in form, content, and technique as new expressive technologies have appeared and evolved. The past century has witnessed the growth of storytelling tools, electronic media channels, and the mass media one-to-many 'broadcast' model. Today -- as we transition to digital media, ubiquitous networking, audience-sensing devices, and computer-aided content delivery -- new models of media storytelling are emerging. These forms may be designed to find you (as opposed to your finding them); to be tradable (in a peer to peer fashion) and modifiable; to be highly distributed in the space/time; to interconnect and invite browsable exploration by crowds and/or to be aggregated over time by one or more participant authors. This talk considers the form, content and technologies associated with customizable, personalizable stories of the future.