THE STORY OF STORIES

Storytelling: “nature’s solution to the problem of being a highly social, highly intelligent species.”

“Anyone who thinks ‘emotions are what make us human’ has never been welcomed home by a dog.” So writes Ashton, author of How To Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery. But that dog isn’t going to tell you what it did while you were gone. What makes us human is our innate ability to put events into sequence, to develop characters and motivations, and to build suspense and reward attention. From campfire tales and cave art, through epics and portraiture, cuneiform tablets, Renaissance art, telegraphy and smartphones, narrative is everywhere. There is memorable storytelling here, too, for example, on the futuristic sterility of a Chinese silicon chip factory. “Anyone who enters the factory floor must first walk over sticky, fly-paper-like doormats, wrap themselves in an antistatic coverall made of conductive fibers, seal it with boots, a hood, a pair of goggles, and two pairs of gloves, and pass through a series of air locks, all to protect the factory and its product from the mortal dangers of dust. What lies beyond the air locks is a sterile alien world, bathed in yellow light, that seems as large as an ocean, with walls farther away than the eye can clearly see, almost empty of organic life.” Because the author is an innovator in technology, the payoff of the book lies with a note of caution in an age of digital storytelling: “The new storytelling technologies of our near future will conflate truth and lies and manifest falsehoods in ways beyond anything we have ever experienced….We must become more self-aware, engage in more self-reflection, and feel more doubt and humility than ever before.”

An ambitious celebration of storytelling, with a warning about the delusions of AI and the deceits of social media.