The Evolution of Storytelling
For the past three weeks, I’ve been working feverishly on this third installment, exploring the evolution of storytelling — something I feel TED embodies on multiple levels.
Speakers, in order of appearance:
- Natasha Tsakos‘ multimedia theatrical adventure
- Jonathan Harris collects stories
- Philippe Starck thinks deep on design
- Jonathan Harris tells the web’s secret stories
- Maira Kalman, the illustrated woman
- Jonathan Harris collects stories
- David Griffin on how photography connects us
- Jehane Noujaim on a global day of film
- David Griffin on how photography connects us
- Philippe Starck thinks deep on design
- Paola Antonelli treats design as art
- Natasha Tsakos‘ multimedia theatrical adventure
- Stefan Sagmeister on what he has learned
- Natasha Tsakos‘ multimedia theatrical adventure
- David Griffin on how photography connects us
- Cameron Sinclair on open-source architecture
- Yves Behar on designing objects that tell stories
- Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you
- Yochai Benkler on the new open-source economics
- Natasha Tsakos‘ multimedia theatrical adventure
- Jonathan Harris collects stories
- Golan Levin on software (as) art
- Paola Antonelli previews “Design and the Elastic Mind”
- Philippe Starck thinks deep on design
- Maira Kalman, the illustrated woman
- Natasha Tsakos‘ multimedia theatrical adventure
With the increasing amount of information available to us, the narrative we construct from and about it is of increasing importance — in understanding that information, in contextualizing it within our own reality, and in relating to it in ways that truly transform it from information to insight. Much of what we know about the world comes from the stories we’ve been told about it, and is reinforced by the stories we continue to tell ourselves and each other. These stories are built over layers of sociology, psychology, scientific paradigm, moral judgment, aesthetic conception, and various other factors each embedded in the tools and conventions of our era. To truly understand the evolution of this narrative, we have to first understand these tools and mechanisms driving storytelling – changing media, tectonic shifts in journalism, technological innovation, art and design as change agents, political dialogues, social movements, and other threads of our cultural fabric that interact with each other and cross-pollinate to produce the rich story of our time.
TED is the epitome of cultural storytelling. Through content curation and production value, TED finds the most engaging and compelling ideas in the world, puts them on a grand stage full of wonder and fascination, and frames them in a way that captures the world’s attention and imagination. This is storytelling. That stage is our modern-day campfire. At the same time, storytelling is always shaped by the tools of the day – new media, smart algorithms, innovative technology – most of which the world sees for the first time precisely on the TED stage. From the incredible Allosphere to MIT’s Sixth Sense to Jonathan Harris’ visualization magic, these tools and artist-scientists embody the cutting edge of storytelling, the forces that shape and define it for years to come.
