Forty-five years ago, in Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan described the digital revolution before us now with preternatural precision: “We have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly we approach the final phase of the extensions of man—the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.”

via CRASHING INTO MEDIA.

I’m conflicted about this. The multimedia is excellent. The stories are interesting. It reminds of work we were doing with Director just before the time of Mosaic and the graphic web. We built some artistic and some intellectual explorations of topics like pioneer women who became captives of Indian people, the Salem Witch Trials, modern dance, and many more topics. The works were fascinating to create. They were/are lovely to view. They are educational.

Alas, no one wants to “watch” them. Essentially, the interactivity consists of choosing a path or clicking a button. The video is good to look at, but time-consuming. At the heart of it, digital stories like this are time-based media, just in chunks, not one whole linear piece. I will look at flypmedia, but I don’t think it is going to be able to create an audience.

The people that put it together are ones who benefit. I think there IS a future for constructivist digital storytelling, where the project is being built, rather than ones that are built and delivered as cool packaged works.

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