Convergence of storytelling through technology

by Angie McCourt

As I was researching digital transformation (day to day impacts on life) for a student presentation I realized what a convergence of human storytelling that is and has been happening. 

30,000 years ago we find evidence of drawings to communicate with the use of hieroglyphs as early as 5,000 years ago (led to common alphabet). The main theme of intent was to tell stories about life and survival. Does this sound familiar?

At different points throughout history we moved to verbal sharing through storytelling which evolved out of chants, song and poetry. Most of those stories did not end up on pages we could access today. It was lost.

Symbols evolved it to written script dating back as early as 9,000 bce then in modern history through written means. Although Chinese monks used blocks and ink to create print it wasn’t until the 15th century when the print press was invented that mass production of written information came to being.

There have been 130M books published in modern history and the increased ability to publish any thought expands the written vehicle for storytelling and documentation further (physical and electronic delivery). 

Starting in 1800 technology has enabled a convergence of the use of all three in a surmountable way.  Today, 350M pictures are uploaded to facebook by 1.6B active users daily. There are 95M photos uploaded to Instagram per day tells a story through a picture. Podcasts and Ted talks allow for massive audiences to hear storytelling. Apple states there are 40B iMessages and 15-20M face time calls daily. 

In one way we’ve come full circle, and another way we see a huge convergence of all of the methods we found useful throughout time while now using technology as a means of scale and access. So how do we use this as an opportunity to collectively evolve as a species?

References: Google, Apple, Forbes