What makes human beings different from the rest of the animal species? Of course, the evolved language could be one reason, but the right reason is how we use the language. While a monkey can signal other monkeys about a lion lurking in the grass, it’s only human beings who can tell a story of a creature that is half human and half lion.
While other animals can live in a pack of tens and hundreds, humans can live in a group of thousands and millions because our stories bind us.
Stories sow the seed of beliefs within each of us, and beliefs keep us together.
Stories are the glue that had kept our species winning every time. Stories have not only told us what happened in the history, but they have also given us the inspiration to dream of the future that can be built. Stories have been making our species embark in the previously unchartered territories.
How are stories told?
“We are the storytelling animal.” — Salman Rushdie
Over the years, the way we told our stories has changed. It began by us painting on the cave walls, but over the years, we now tell our stories in many ways — by writing books, by recording podcasts and short films. While the internet has made the playing field available to everybody, it still has some barriers that are missed by a regular pair of eyes.
While one can make a short film and upload it to the Youtube, it becomes challenging to make it reach more than a few thousand people.
With all this technology around us, storytelling is still a lonely job.
It is going to change. We have come a long way from those cave paintings, but storytelling doesn’t need to be limited to the elites. There is a story in each one of us, and all of us ought to tell it to the world. While blockchain itself is a story and a belief of a good future, it will change how stories are told.
It’s exciting to see there are massive companies like VideoCoin building the new kind of infrastructure for videos, but what most excites me is the companies like Livetree who are making the new type of economic model around storytelling that has never been possible before.
