The future of Story, seen in bits

[sartorias]

The other day matociquala was talking about one of my own favorite subjects: where story and the internet might lead. Meanwhile, we get glimpses here and there-- this one from superversive by way of Orson Scott Card, who links to another clever one here. I am sure I didn't get a lot of the references (thought myself very clever to get "hack" from the axe) but it

Comments

[intertext]

I love "convert to symbol"! I'm going to show this to my intro to literature class this week. We're reading some vaguely postmodern stuff (Donald Barthelme's "The Glass Mountain" today) and this fits in a vaguely postmodern metafictional way :)

[sartorias]

Oh, good idea.

[haikujaguar]

When I think that I was born in a world without the Internet, it boggles me trying to imagine the world my daughter's going to grow up in.

I had this conversation with my husband: "The news thinks it's bad parenting that children watch TV, that it's bad for them."

To which my husband said: "The girl is going to be living in a media-saturated world. If we don't teach her now how to put that in context/perspective, that's the bad parenting."

[sartorias]

Yep--I agree. I'll never forget being at a b-day party for kids when my daughter was small, and many of the parents my age were into all kinds of parenting techniques...some good...some not so....here was this boy whose mother was blatting on and on in the other room about how HER child was never exposed to TV, home schooled (not that I have an issue with that because I do not, but:) and only exposed to nurturing art, the classics, yadda, and there he was with the other kids in the playroom, which had a TV in the corner. It was on. And while all the kids were rough-and-tumbling in a game they were making up as they went along, he was alone before the tv, drinking it in, including the commercials.

[haikujaguar]

...wow.

[windsong5]

I think it all comes down to moderation. Too much of anything can be bad. (Except reading of course! :))
I would love to be able to put a nice protective bubble around my children to protect them from being hurt out in the world--but that would be really bad parenting. I once heard it said that good parenting is the art of letting go. Teaching our children to survive in the world on their own. Giving them the responsibility to take care of themselves a bit at a time.
Television and the internet can be a wonderful thing. Especially in sending out information that otherwise would not be so easily available I think it's important for a parent to teach their children values that are important to their family, and then trust them.

[green_knight]

While those are very clever things, I don't think they're new things - breaking down the fourth wall between artists and observers, or playing with expectations, is a very old technique, and with the advertising site I was reminded of the sidewalk painting in Mary Poppins, for instance.