Dr. Thornburg’s idea of the rhymes of history basically
states that many modern technological innovations echo previous ideas,
experiences, and/or cultural interactions from humanity’s past. Digital
storytelling through voicethread.com, storybird.com, or iPad apps such as
StoryLines all attempt to captivate the visual, auditory, and textual elements
of storytelling. The format for exchanging stories has changed throughout the years;
however the purpose of the stories remains as a collective approach to share
the human experience. Digital storytelling attempts to engage as many senses as
possible as a way to recreate in a sense the storytelling around a fire among
family, friends, and/or communities.
Kevin Kelly’s extrapolation of where the web is going in
his TED Talk “The next 5,000 days of the web” here describes what it is evolving into a
single, global machine and the web is its OS (operating system). All of us
together make up this machine and the web, which has artificial intelligence
but it is in and of itself not a singular consciousness or entity, rather it is
made up of all of the people and things that are connected to it. He also
contends that we will become codependent on this Web as we are currently
dependent on the alphabet and writing. Instead of an alternate reality, this
emerging web combines physical reality with digital reality. Kelly reverses
McLuhan’s statement “Machines are the extensions of the human senses” to
“humans are now going to be the extended senses of the machine”. These ideas
reinforce the connections, consciousness, and collective consciousness of
humanity and its perception of how it sees itself as a collective, interactive,
and dominant force in the natural world.
References:
Kelly, K. (2007, December). Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the Web [Speech]. Speech delivered at the EG
2007 Conference, Los Angeles. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html
Laureate Education (2010) Rhymes of
History. Thornburg, D., Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=6200933&Survey=1&47=6076761&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1
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