On the electronic word

This blog is about the literary in video games and electronic media. Reading it brought me to this: a transcript of a talk entitled "A New Vision for Interactive Stories", given at the Game Designer's Conference. It's about how Aristotle, Joe Campbell, and Robert McKee--the elements of the story as we know it--don't necessarily apply to video game stories, the alternative literary structure of video games, and all that jazz. Very interesting.

Then there is this: What is electronic writing? which is about the forms the electronic word can take, and how sometimes those forms aren't even electronic. And this: Second Life, a true virtual reality.

It all makes you think, doesn't it? How new is this, I wonder? It's a whole world of 'what if' developing before us, a future in which science fiction is king. This has long been the purview of games and stories, but today a pilot can make a rocky landing, then analyze all the ways it could have gone wrong and make them 'real' in VR simulations, for the benefit of future pilots. Through huge online 'games' like Second Life, we are developing the body of information we need to elevate sociology and psychology onto the plane of 'true' science that they've been denied for so long. 'What if' is becoming increasingly realistic, so that someday, perhaps 'what if' can seriously take place in, say, a simulation of a major war. If the Bomb hadn't been dropped? If the US had gotten involved sooner? If we'd waited to invade Iraq, like everyone wanted?

Stories, meanwhile, are being told in completely new ways. In fact, can they still be called stories, by the classic definition? Certainly they're new forms of literary expression that have never been seen before.

In short, I wonder whether this will change the world. I wonder whether we're standing on the brink of a revolution in thought process that hasn't happened, perhaps, since the advent of writing, or at least the printing press. Will entirely new ways of interacting with the world come about?