Author: Christy

After grumbling in the previous post about how writers make predictions about technology and not writing, I have to put my words where my thoughts are. So, here goes some predictions about I think writing will change over the next 10 years. I say writing, not just digital writing because I’m into all forms of writing (cross-media, get it?).

Primary Satellite Texts!
Authors will start creating their own satellite texts around their works. At present, most writers add to their original storyworld is another book or film to make a sequel or trilogy (if they’re lucky). These usually require the same characters being developed. Secondary characters and sub-plots are explored and ravaged by the fans. I predict that we’ll see the original authors getting into producing short and full-length stories that explore and do anarchic things to their secondary characters and sub-plots, using their own name and through an alias. They will also explore other arts types and mediums.

Extreme Cross-Media Stories
More and more stories will be told in the transfiction style. By transfiction I refer to stories that are distributed over more than one text, one medium. Each text, each story on each device or each website is not autonomous, unlike Henry Jenkins’ transmedia storytelling. In transfiction (a term to counter Jenkins’, though they should be the other way around!), the story is dependent on all the pieces on each medium, device or site to be read/experienced for it to be understood. Basically, no single segment will be sufficient. These will vary between being experienced simultaneously and sequentially. Examples we see now are parallel narratives with TV shows that you can participate with by answering a quiz on the Web, mobiles, etc (especially here in Oz). But, we’ll see stories, not just games being experienced this way. In consequence too, we’ll see more technologies for having ‘hyperlinks’ between media. Using blue-tooth, wireless, infra-red or something.

Playful Devices for Adults (not sex toys!!)
I predict that more toys, more non-serious gadgets will also be used for storytelling. We’ve seen, with the development of ARGs and just natural human experimentation, the use of ‘real-world’ devices for storytelling (mobile phones, email, PDAs, etc). I predict we’ll see more fun toys, gadgets, one-off items and multi-use items that allow us to play with the storyworlds. I’ll look forward to spending more time in the adult sections of bookstores rather than being in the toy shop all the time! This will lead to more pervasive entertainment, but also extreme branded entertainment. In the end, I think rather than having products that advertisers embed ito entertainment to reach the audiences, we’ll see entertainment/creation devices being THE product to produce.

Stories embedded in Nature
At the same time as these playful gadgets I believe technologies will develop so that we can have more immersive storytelling in the real world. Characters, for instance, will be magically manifest with specially created fog projections (the technology is already out by the way); messages will appear in rock pools with specially created A-Life seaworms. Since the best stories are usually ones that use the medium in some way, I believe that these technologies will see more stories being written about Nature, magic and other magic-realism type genres.

Personalisation and the Shared Experience Crisis
More and more forms of entertainment will be created so that they are personalised to each audience member. By personalisation I refer to the abstract qualities for audience segments (think for instance about animated features and how there are jokes for kids and adults); and also to the technical personalisation for the individual abilities of the user. This will result in a crisis of reviewing and critiquing as there will be no shared experience of a work. What will happen then?

Return to Classic Storytelling
As a natural balancing reaction to the pervasiveness of collaborative authorship and epistolary fiction, there will be a return to the traditional form of fantasy storytelling with the single, narrated author and the stylised storytelling of the classics. We’ll even see the return of the old elaborate typography.

AI & Human Narrator Teams
Artificial Intelligence software will be utilised more for storytelling, including the simulation of AI. In the end, the best works will be those in which the author has a close relationship with the software program and the resulting work therefore is seen as a collaboration, a merging of the best two entertainers. So, we’ll see the Spielberg and C3PO colloboration and so on…:)

Portals to Quality Entertainment
We’ve seen companies become conglomerates. We’ve seen how many of these conglomerates are struggling. I think the move toward an entertainment company having many media outlets for a storyworld is the right instinct. But I think we’ll see more companies relying on storyworlds rather than mutliple products. So, for instance, we’ll have a conglomerate that is the guardian of the storyworld like King Kong. Since cross-media works exist over time, for many audiences, in many arts types, the production will be ongoing. There will also be related sub-worlds being developed and managed by the one company (see prediction one). For example, films about the world of giant creatures on the island etc. So, companies will manage worlds, not products, and they will find a way to link them all.

What do new media writers think the future of digital writing? When asked how digital writing will change in the next 10 years, they answered thus:

“Ten years from now bandwidth and storage constraints might be completely gone. Video will be high definition, organic memory will make personally storing terabytes of information an unremarkable thing … Personally, I hope in 10 years wearable computers and displays will be ubiquitous, that internet access will be extended to every portion of the planet that is currently without it, that the semantic web will have arrived.” (Dan Waber)

“Mobile, wearables and other location aware technologies are going to have a major impact on digital writing in the coming years.” (Tim Wright, of XPT fame))

“In the next 10 years (if not much much sooner), it seems like it will be commonplace to access digital writing on handheld equipment rather than on a laptop or pc” (JodiAnn Stevenson)

“Words will have less of a part to play in digital arts over the next 10 years. We will see more animated images, video and sound-experiments” (Simon Harris)

“Stories may automatically orchestrate how we read (via programming) rather than us choosing how we read. For example, a person’s web browser may read that person’s browser habits and organize bookmarks/links automatically. Digital / new media could also incorporate adaptive software so that no person would experience the exact same story. How cool would that be!” (Sarah Boland) [incidently, a cross-media writer here in Oz that I’ve been meaning to catch up with for 2 years!]

“A lot of projects are going to routinely involve sound, video, hard core programming, which in turn means that they will be made by tightly budgeted production teams … I, therefore, expect to see much of the art form being hit by the halitosis of capitalism and developing along the lines of the film industry; developing big prestigious projects such as games and corporate sites.” (Gavin Stewart)

Hmm, why the predictions about technology? I mean, yeah, these changes will happen, any media watcher can tell us that. As writers, I’d prefer it if they told us how they think digital writing (the creation and content) will change over the next 10 years. Hmm…I may post some ideas.

I believe that one of the characteristics of contemporary entertainment is the blurring of the productions stages, in particular, how production blurs into publication/broadcast. I have previously called this the ‘caught-with-hair-in-the-curlers-aesthetic’ regarding the Girl Friday blog and even mentioned recently at LAMP the impact of the Blair Witch website on the reception of the film (which was online over a year before the film was released), but now here is another form of production publication to prepare audiences for the actual publication/broadcast/distribution and of course gather fans: podcasts by the director of Superman Returns. Subscribe to the following URL in iTunes, or download from the Blue Tights blog: http://movabletype.warnerbros.com/supermanreturns/bryansjournals.xml