"The Scales of Narrative"
Rhodes House, Oxford, 30 November 2019.
The first form of duplication was storytelling. No one can know how long it took, after language developed, before the tradition began, but it is through the telling of stories that we still mostly learn and pass on information. You are reading a story now; one I have constructed only from hearing, seeing and reading other stories. The ‘Slowdown’ book my talk at the forum is based on is a small attempt to refashion one particular and in many ways rather familiar tale, namely the account of how fast the human world is changing. The story was the first form of data, transmitted inefficiently, always evolving, and spreading – duplicating and growing – when many people heard it being told and a few embellished it. Back then, and in many places until very recently, a story was lost unless at least one of those who heard it both remembered it and passed it on.