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18 comments:
Interesting! Awesome videos aside, what exactly are you're getting at, here? If we didn't live in stories, what are you suggesting? Why can't this bigger sphere of knowledge just increase the scope of our own stories? Doesn't this just mean that we're seeing more and more data that's always been available within our particular light cone, but previously out of reach?
Is what you're suggesting that this saturation of knowledge blows out the signal-to-noise-ratio so that we lose focus on what's important? Is it more that we are slowly losing our hold as the masters of our own narratives?
Is it a perspective issue? That we're likely to be oppressed by our relative insignificance more and more compared to someone sitting in the back of cave, seeing nothing but the shadows and suggestions of flames dancing on a wall?
Is it possible that maybe, what we used to think of as relevant was misguided in the first place?
Err, sorry about that. Just finished off some Macallan if that's a good enough excuse.
I think AiBU9's post of this some time ago is probably a more accurate representation of what you are musing about here? ( Be careful watching that whilst drinking btw. It can get you kinda down.)
Well, no; but it's an interesting contrast. In AiBU9's link, the "additional information" constructs an exceptionally rich story out of details. In mine, a story is playfully disrupted by similar details.
I can't be completely sure, but I think my point was about dramatic stories being dependent on the revelation of select facts. Of course some stories can be enhanced by additional information, but many of our traditional stories (and especially our personal narratives) rely on focus. Deviate too far from the core story, and the intent is lost. But what kind of shoes was Jack wearing when he climbed the beanstalk; a child (or sporting goods store owner) might ask.
This is not to say that we need to see the world only through simple stories. I'm as excited by augmented reality as the next guy. Just wondering if this video doesn't point out the hidden cost of misapplication.
Another extreme, to prove a point: Under perfect information saturation, all stories are the same story, and what's the point of that?
There really is a sharp contrast between the two that's not obvious on the surface. From what I remember the Riding Hood video came well after the Royksopp video, and seems like someone trying to expand on a neat idea. But you're right, they missed the point: the Royksopp video works because the information is inexorably part of the story, whereas applying the same technique to a story that already exists ends up being not much more than a distraction.
I'm taking your Perfect Information Saturation (PIS) example to be like eating a cake that was deconstructed down to it's chemical components. It would taste gross and lead you nowhere. There's no story with everything separated out like that. But, ultimately I think it's a better story once you follow it through to it's inevitable conclusion and put it all together as a cake. Kind of like making one yourself rather than buying it at Costco. The conclusion of your Universal Truth Story (UTS) I think could have the same beauty to it. It would be immeasurably long, contain all billions and billions of smaller and isolated stories inside of it, and all of which fantastically tie together in the final few minutes to its necessary conclusion.
Sadly, this includes Episode 1 and the BSG finale.
Pone, when I posted that video i was thinking it might be a more accurate example. in essence the "how to do it right example". So yeah i missed your point about the distraction of information. I was thinking about this last night and fell asleep before getting a chance to post about it, But it was a question that fell along the lines of what is being discussed here. i guess sort of at the opposing end of the idea. It was a reaction I had to the things Fugu posted where I felt myself wondering at what point does the illustration of information go beyond just that and become a story. When can someone pull a parable from compiled pieces of information. That signal to noise example is brutally explicit in its flaw when it asks "what does it all mean" at the very end. It basically destroys any point the compilation of information could have possibly provided the viewer.
I suspect your question is when does a story go from descriptive, to didactic? It's something that stops me whenever I get it in my head that I want to do some creative writing. Because you see, I love details. And I find it hard to discriminate which details are vital and which are fluff. It's kind of like that show Hoarders.
Is this a societal trend? What with the exponential increase of information comes the exponential increase of crap disguised as information?
Interesting to consider authors like Mellville and Mieville, who both wield with razorlike precision the skill of information saturation.
Can we please have a moratorium regarding the BSG finale from any future POT discusions or posts? Please?
By perfect information saturation (PIS), I mean the type of interactive, infinitely-branching story suggested by the Little Red Riding Hood video; where all possible related and tangential information is available to the reader/user of the story.
I wasn't talking so much about stories, though, as I was talking about our experiences of our own lives. Our memories function like old fairy tales, omitting irrelevant details and highlighting details that contribute to the memory, or the message of the memory. This IS the way we tell stories--and thus, we live in them. How are our own personal narratives affected by perfect machine recall, and perfect information saturation (PIS)?
Also, congratulations, Fugu, you've managed to create a variant of Godwin's Law out of your favorite TV show.
So, we're talking about how our memories are affected as we approach the PIS Horizon (PISH)... Huh! The internet kind of take us off the rails guiding us through our personal narratives, doesn't it. It's like in that "what does it all mean" video that Panic loved so much--at 3:20 it says that a weeks worth of the NYT contains more information than someone could come across in a lifetime during the 18th century. But with the internet, that's like exponentially even more information available, just within seconds. That's fucking nuts!!! How the hell do our brains cope with that?!?
I guess we ignore most of it. We have to, right? In that sense, PIS is impossible since our brains won't allow it. We can only consolidate so much data into episodic memory, and only form so many associations in long-term memory, so the rest just gets dumped. But here's where it gets interesting I think, because this doesn't change the fact that we're still exposed to a gazillion more bits of information than ever before. The result is that we're forced to become much more efficient at filtering out the noise. I think that this is important! Because this seems to mean that the more efficient and accurate we are at consolidating relevant information the more solid our memories will be. OR, for those of us who suck at it, our personal narratives will be more clouded and disjointed!
Actually, I guess there would be three ways to form good memories: reduce the amount of information you receive, increase your ability to form associations in long-term memory, or increase your filtering ability as you approach the PISH. I don't know if the second option is possible, the first is boring, so yeah that leaves the third, which is probably what most of us who live on the internet are doing.
Ah, I think you're overestimating new technology's ability to make meaningful changes in people's brains, Pony. When I was a kid, my family bought a set of encyclopedias. We didn't have one before. Now, I suddenly had access to 200 pounds worth of new information. Mainly, though, I just looked at the color plates of snakes and whatnot. Other than that, the only difference the encyclopedias made in my life was that I asked my father fewer factual questions, because it was really annoying to hear him say, "I don't know, look it up."
I think the Internet has had a similarly underwhelming effect. Instead of color plates I look at Youtube and porn, and yeah, I can find out the answer to things really fast. But until my brain's software changes, this Internet is just one more source of information in the world that hits the same bottleneck of my attention.
Yeah, I think you guys are right on. I linked this to someone on the Twitter, and she told me this: With growing access to information we'll still be framed by human limitations."
I also agree that no one's going to die from information overload. I do think that with all the bits and chunks of data newly available to choose from, the nature of stories (both fictional narratives; and the way we perceive our own histories) may go through some changes. As our filters evolve, they won't all evolve in the same way. Stories are only part of the picture, probably.
I still think the biggest danger will be a new dark age, where the glut of information (and the rotten way most of you breeders seem to be raising your kids) renders people incapable of distinguishing good information from bullshit.
This cartoon reminds me of Jimmy Corrigan--how it tells a story in a way that couldn't be done textually, at least not without boring the reader/viewer to death. So I see what you mean by the change in stories. Ultimately, though, I think mainstream movies/cartoons/comics/etc. will always try to basically mimic the linearity of oral storytelling. People will always talk and tell stories this way, and I think it'd take some qualitative brainshift to ever alter that.
And by "tell stories," I mean converse. The answer to "how was your day" is a story, and it's hard to imagine the answer to that question ever being structured the way this cartoon is.
Kids talk like this. Which is not to say that it's right, just that maybe it's within us. You can ask them how school was and get any number of surprising, unrelated answers. I think I've only seen this once, really, but but when a kid has access to more data, they can really go off. I once asked a third grader what they thought of the Pokémon game. I think he talked for like 10 minutes, and I couldn't shake him for the rest of the party.
I appear to have gone off on a tangent.
Lesson: when kidnapping a child, it's best to fill your windowless van and unfinished basement with toys, pets, and other distractions.
You know what the intarwebs is missing for long term memory association? A smell. My basement now holds way too many memory links.
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