2:39 p.m. February 2, 2010

Within a tiny, white walled room, I sit huddled around two Dell computer screens reading about the infamous Web 2.0. The temperature is 75 degrees. Behind me is an electrical room, room 330A to be precise. At any moment some terrible event with only a .00001% chance of happening could occur. There are faulty mechanics in my computer, just waiting to trigger a fiery inferno incinerating all biological beings within a range of five feet.  My pencil is bound to slip from my hand and gouge out my eye.

What do I do? How much time do I have left….

 

Tim O’ Reilly is correct about what’s happened.  Web 2.0 is the advent of the user.  We are now centrally apart, rather than isolated, from the creation, continuation, and direction of the internet.  Using a variety of services from Google to Flickr, we are now creators and builders that are deeply interconnected into a myriad of communities.  The outcome of this advent is, as Bryan Alexander writes, “the explosion of user-generated content” which is leading to new forms of storytelling unlike what we’ve seen before.

While I have some familiarity with Web 2.0, Alexander opens new degrees of creativity and storytelling of which I’d not seriously considered.  Particularly in the integration of multiple mediums like Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs to tell a story that add new dimensions to the way in which stories can be told.

First, each medium dictates different ways in which the content is published.  Twitter is by way of brevity, with short insights or questions updated in seemingly real time.  Facebook, as is in the case of the teenager, a seemingly personal, tangible interaction with a character even if fictional.

The second dimension is the temporal structuring that Web 2.0 offers storytelling.  Stories are unfolding, rather than received in their entirety at once, and users can actively engage with them as events happen in open dialogue.  This dialogue means there isn’t one storyteller as others can shape the direction of a narrative or add new ones by active engagement.

Where I question storytelling is not the ability or that there are those who want to create and do create but there isn’t enough structure to push or aggregate it all.  Facebook is defined by an unsaid social protocol where people act and publish information in certain ways.  Twitter, in somewhat similar fashions, is often flooded with hour by hour updates of other’s daily activities.

I’m not claiming that anyone is right or wrong about what they do or how they express themselves, but it is peculiar why there is such active enthusiasm over this class when the tools have already all been there before us.  It is also is captivating how those, when given the means and right setting to storytell will do so.  I myself have incorporated the persona MuZZuMs, a username I created in Middle School.  What or who is MuZZuMs isn’t entirely clear, yet.

The conclusion, then, is that storytelling in a web 2.0 isn’t conventional.  It twists and turns traditional ways of expressing.  Stories can be told by way of Google Maps or through photo slide shows.  Surely I will pursue this more as the semester goes on.