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I've somehow managed to find myself rereading Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel. (It was one of the required texts for a class I took 1.5 years ago.) It's a really wonderful little book, and it's a very easy read. As background information, Laurel is a Silicon Valley veteran who's managed to participate in four of the major computer tech bubbles of the last 25 years (those being games, multimedia, virtual reality, and the infamous dot-coms). She was also one of the founders of the late girl's software company Purple Moon, a company that actually made games aimed at the adolescent female demographic, not cheap marketing tie-ins to earn an exploitive quick buck. (I have issues with a lot of the so-called "games" intended for girls back in the 1990s. It's gotten a bit better these days, but it's still pretty bad.) Really, it's a really good read.
But I wanted to share one thing she had to say on storytelling:
Many of the rules and stories that I grew up with - even venerable stuff like proverbs and Greek myths - don't seem entirely applicable in today's world. One of the stories that doesn't work very well these days is Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare." As you will recall, in the original story, the Tortoise wins the race because the Hare is an over-confident slacker. Here's how the story might go today:
One day a hare was boasting of his running speed and laughing at the tortoise for being so slow. Much to the hare's surprise the tortoise challenged him to a race. The hare, looking on the whole affair as a great joke, readily consented. The race began and the hare, of course, soon left the tortoise far behind and went on to beat him handily. It was probably the case that the tortoise thought the hare would stop and fool around and maybe take a nap. But the tortoise failed to notice that the hare did everything fast and hard. He drove fast and he talked fast and he ate fast and he ran fast. He traded hot stocks on his handheld during boring business meetings. No time was wasted. The tortoise, on the other hand, felt that his maturity and balance made him superior to the hare, and if he worked steadily and paid his bills on time, he would do well in the end. The hare made millions on internet stocks before the NASDAQ crashed, and his fortunes sent several generations of little hares to the best colleges. After retirement, the tortoise was unable to survive in the city on his shrinking social security checks, so he ended up living in the park.
Okay, what's wrong with that story? It's cynical. It doesn't give good advice about how to live. We probably don't want our children to believe it, even though some of us may be afraid that it's true. One of our perennial fears about technology is that as technology gets better at telling stories (though means like virtual reality and special effects), people - especially kids - will be increasingly unable to distinguish reality from illusion. But to my mind, the danger isn't technology; it's the stories of our times that pose the greatest threat to our children and our future. Stories are tools for knowing and judging.
Change the stories, and you change how people live.
Emphasis is per the source, not mine.
But I wanted to share one thing she had to say on storytelling:
Many of the rules and stories that I grew up with - even venerable stuff like proverbs and Greek myths - don't seem entirely applicable in today's world. One of the stories that doesn't work very well these days is Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare." As you will recall, in the original story, the Tortoise wins the race because the Hare is an over-confident slacker. Here's how the story might go today:
One day a hare was boasting of his running speed and laughing at the tortoise for being so slow. Much to the hare's surprise the tortoise challenged him to a race. The hare, looking on the whole affair as a great joke, readily consented. The race began and the hare, of course, soon left the tortoise far behind and went on to beat him handily. It was probably the case that the tortoise thought the hare would stop and fool around and maybe take a nap. But the tortoise failed to notice that the hare did everything fast and hard. He drove fast and he talked fast and he ate fast and he ran fast. He traded hot stocks on his handheld during boring business meetings. No time was wasted. The tortoise, on the other hand, felt that his maturity and balance made him superior to the hare, and if he worked steadily and paid his bills on time, he would do well in the end. The hare made millions on internet stocks before the NASDAQ crashed, and his fortunes sent several generations of little hares to the best colleges. After retirement, the tortoise was unable to survive in the city on his shrinking social security checks, so he ended up living in the park.
Okay, what's wrong with that story? It's cynical. It doesn't give good advice about how to live. We probably don't want our children to believe it, even though some of us may be afraid that it's true. One of our perennial fears about technology is that as technology gets better at telling stories (though means like virtual reality and special effects), people - especially kids - will be increasingly unable to distinguish reality from illusion. But to my mind, the danger isn't technology; it's the stories of our times that pose the greatest threat to our children and our future. Stories are tools for knowing and judging.
Change the stories, and you change how people live.
Emphasis is per the source, not mine.
