Storytelling: Adapt or Die

Charles Darwin once said:

"It's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one most adaptable to change."

It gets me thinking about the age of information we're living in. We're really in the midst of an "adapt" or be left behind in a cloud of dust. There's always the option of checking out of the modern world, but then you're looked upon as a new ager, a hippie, or at worst, a bum. I want to hang on for as long as possible. Not only that, but I choose to work hard to be at the forefront of things. Not everything of course. I'm not THAT smart. Just walking through Macworld Exhibit Hall, or the Ad Tech version I'm going to this week, completely zaps my strength. I love all the new techie stuff, but my brain fills up so fast and I become so mentally and physically exhausted that after about 30 minutes, I start looking around for an empty Exhibit Booth I can sneak in for a quick nap.

So I choose one aspect of this gigantic information typhoon we are being swept around in. It's storytelling. Not very technical, I know, but you watch enough You Tube videos and TV shows and advertisements and you realize that there is a great need for people who know how to craft a heartfelt story.

This world is moving way too fast, and we need new fablemakers to make sense of it all. The need for storytellers is, in my opinion, at an all-time high. In years past, we needed storytellers to record history. Prehistoric man painted scenes on cave walls. Mayans and Egyptians told stories through hieroglyphic symbols. Biblical writers scribbled in scrolls. Shakespeare wrote with a quill dipped in ink, and modern day storytellers write on a keyboard. As an aside, I recently purchased MacSpeech Dictate so I am experimenting with the dictation of my stories into a Word Document. I'm not much of a typist, so I love it. Plus, it helps me "write in a conversational style." 

Futurist Rolf Jensen talks about the importance of storytelling in his "The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination will Transform Your Business."

He says, "In the Information Society, our work has been driven by information technology; in the Dream Society, our work will be driven by stories and emotions, not just by data...Anyone seeking success in the market of the future will have to be a storyteller. The story is the heart of the matter."

But what's his definition of storytelling? Is it ads, movies, TV shows, novels, short stories, stand up comics? He explains...

(We're talking about) "stories about the universe and mankind's place in it, or they may be little everyday stories about who we are and who others are. These stories may be transmitted orally, in written form, through images, in plays or movies, or through the very products we choose to be surrounded by">