Storytelling

On the website of the digital storycenter you can find the digital storytelling cookbook. Want to know what is real intelligence? In the cookbook I found this nice quote of cultural anthropologist Gregory Bateson. He was asked in the 1950s if he believed that computer artificial intelligence was possible. He responded that he did not know, but that he believed when you would ask a computer a yes-or-no question and it responded with “that reminds me of a story”, you would be close.

I think stories deserve a more prominent place in our research than they have at the moment. People’s personal stories are often so much richer than actual facts. They tend to convince people more easy than rational argumens. Not only logical conclusions – after thourough research – is what counts, but the rich story that lead to the logical conclusion is what counts. Boonstra calls it narrative change work:
“The idea is to work with how people talk with, to and about eachother and construct their wider realities and relations. (…) Analyzing the narratives is an act of deconstruction of the story by searching for dualities, denying the plot, finding the exception, tracing what is between the lines and other cognitive activities. Several stories can be brought together for deconstruction by multi-voicing and reconstructing by making new stories and opening up new possibilities” Boonstra (2004: 460).
Boonstra, J.J. (2004). Dynamics of organizational change and learning. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.