{"id":3210,"date":"2011-08-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardlittledale.wordpress.com\/?p=3210"},"modified":"2011-08-11T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T08:00:00","slug":"time-for-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/2011\/08\/11\/time-for-a-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a story…"},"content":{"rendered":"

… or a story of time?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As an enthusiastic advocate of storytelling and an equally enthusiastic user of digital technology I should probably find MSN’s latest service a marriage made in heaven. After all, it says in bright colourful letters at the top : always have time for a story<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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In fact, it just made me sad. To me a story is an embodied face to face human encounter, and never more so than between a parent and child. The idea that a parent might salve the parental conscience when necessarily away from home by an\u00a0animated\u00a0Noddy story doesn’t really fool me.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the technology isn’t clever. Below you can see the parent’s view – complete with script and\u00a0highlighted\u00a0words which animate the page for a child – much as you would point things out when reading a book with them. When the (distant) parent reads the word ‘sun’ below, the sun will move, wink and make a sound – which will doubtless\u00a0entrance\u00a0the child. \u00a0This will be an interactive experience, without a doubt – but is it really telling a story?<\/p>\n

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I don’t want to sound like some kind of technophobic luddite who wants to turn the clock back. Nor do I want to be the kind of Christian who bewails the social changes that mean a parent who would love to be there at story time cannot through economic necessity. So what is my problem? \u00a0It is partly a resentment, however foolish, \u00a0that technology should intrude on this most intimate of parent-child encounters. \u00a0Will it really, as it says on the\u00a0first\u00a0page above “bring you closer together”?<\/em> I am also troubled by the belief that animated bells and whistles make for good storytelling. \u00a0They no more make the story than a gaudy powerpoint slide <\/a>makes the\u00a0presentation.<\/p>\n

Should we hail this as an advance which keeps story afloat in our busy culture, or sound a cautionary note because it\u00a0changes\u00a0the way we understand good story, I wonder?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… or a story of time? As an enthusiastic advocate of storytelling and an equally enthusiastic user of digital technology I should probably find MSN’s latest service a marriage made in heaven. After all, it says in bright colourful letters … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/176.32.230.12\/richardlittledale.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}