Our digital extensions spare us no time -- an email from work, a tweet from a celebrated artist, an old friend's ping on facebook, latest news, software updates, photo updates on flickr -- everything is in the now. Choices have spoilt us for the lack of consistency, making it difficult to understand the past or predict the future. A narrative collapse has occurred, indeed.
To what extent has interactivity tampered with the narrative? Every narrative aims for greater immersion. While some may say interactivity dampens that immersive quality, it may not hold true for all. For in the case of role-play and strategy games, interactivity plays a key role in diving deeper into the narrative.
The world is full of people like you and me who rely on stories to tell us who we are, where we come from and why we exist. And now we have more stories than one can handle, each prescribing a different approach, a new moral or a fresh perspective, each less reliable than the next. The resulting disorientation forces us to justify our identity by scattering it into one too many disembodied profiles.
Who am I?
Courtesy: Chapter 1, Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff