Four Narrative Styles in Transmedia Storytelling

Thank you Brad, Henry and David for organizing this mammoth, international, transmedia conference on storytelling! I always look forward to coming to M.I.T.'s conferences because they are so good at combining art and science, and finding paradigms that reach across disciplines and cultures. Certainly the theme of storytelling is one of the best ways to do this. Since my life has been devoted to the equal pursuit of science and art through kinesiology and literature, I feel at home analyzing drama in terms of physics. But the real problem I am trying to solve is how to make American literature keep up with the exciting innovations made in science and technology for the past 100 years. It is ironic that some of the best minds in the humanities are now teaching at this famous Institute of Technology, and American commercial fiction is a meagre, simplistic affair compared to what is happening in game theory, hypertext, and other transmedia modalities. How can we rediscover and invent a new language to express all the wonder and complexity of our world? Let me first say what I am NOT talking about and that is the open structures of game theory, hypertext and other modalities based on chance, mathematics, and spatial design; nor am I talking about the kind of interactivity and communal participation that creates weblogs and blogs, although I would love to capture the fun, spontaneity and sense of community of these open structures in a novel. In his book