My eyes tend to glaze over whenever I see a new article on the imminent death of print media, but recently I read an interesting variation on the theme. In a Times article, Ben Macintyre argues that the internet is burying the art of storytelling right alongside the newspaper.
The basic argument is that the internet has damaged our ability to read. By reducing our inputs of information to staccato bursts of text, the internet has trained us to skim and skip. The thought of an uninterrupted stretch of text with no weblinks to escape through has become unbearable; we crave the instant gratification of knowledge and no longer possess the patience to wade through a novel, savoring the slow reveal. Though Macintyre doesn’t call out social networking by name, it’s clear that he views social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as particularly culpable.
The menace is two-fold. Firstly, social networking sites are an endless source of distraction. By allowing users to effortlessly socialize from their bedrooms, social networking sites (and more broadly the internet) have robbed us of the uninterrupted time and patience for deep reading. Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, Facebook and Twitter with their short-format wallposts and tweets, have changed the way we read. We have come to expect our stories short and snappy in 140 characters or less. But novels, routinely stretching past 140 pages, still have the temerity to place high demands on our time and attention. And so Macintyre concludes that story-telling in general, and the long-form story in particular, has a rapidly dwindling shelf-life: “Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment.”
Though Macintyre makes some points I am sympathetic with, his hyperbolic style and extreme position (“The Internet is Killing Storytelling”) undermines the importance of his observations. Social networking sites have had a fascinating effect on the way people transfer information, and it is definitely worth exploring the ramifications these changes have had on story-telling. But to declare the coming death of story-telling puts him squarely in the camp of cranks who foretold cultural doom when the printing press, electricity, radio, and television were first invented. It is shortsighted to claim that a change in the way we read and write could endanger story-telling, given that storytelling predates written language many millennia.
Taking a more balanced approach to the subject is Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic article Is Google Making us Stupid? Carr expresses the same doubts as Macintyre, but acknowledges the long history of similar technological developments and the people who opposed them. Even Plato, in the Phaedrus, complained that the written word would make people more forgetful.
Similarly, Joel Achenbach, in a Washington Post article, takes a more thoughtful look at the relationship between the internet and storytelling. He argues that the internet has made it more difficult for a long-form story to succeed, but that this will not harm storytelling so much as raise the standards for storytellers. To succeed in the harsher environment of shortened attention spans and competing distractions, storytellers have to sharpen their skills and stick to the point. The result is a leaner, more streamlined version of the story.
I found Achenbach’s take more convincing: the internet, and social networking sites in particular, represent a fundamental change in the way media is presented. When our reading choices are strongly influenced by articles our friends have linked to on Twitter or Facebook, or by online aggregators, writers who want to go viral need to carefully craft their stories. When your story has to compete against a sea of distractions in the form of tweets, blog posts, emails, and facebook posts, only the sharpest long-form stories can succeed. Still, both articles bring up some interesting questions, especially with regard to the future of storytelling.
There’s no doubt that storytelling will survive, but how will the novel as a form be influenced by the internet? Will a new dominant form of narrative arise? How have social networking sites affected the narrative structure and spread of gossip? And can social networking sites aid the process of storytelling?
1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6903537.ece
2. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102804896_pf.html
1 comment:
Clearly, your use of the Internet hasn't hurt either your storytelling ability or your writing style. Your post has all the elements: interesting, thought-provoking subject; good arguments, some introspection (what does it mean to me?)and, perhaps most importantly, a guide for us, your readers, so that we can judge for ourselves going forward just how fast the decline of good prose is happening.
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