Technology has made our modern world the kind of place science fiction writers of the past only dreamed about -- all sorts of information at our fingertips, accessible via mobile devices; thousands of books from our personal libraries carried around on lightweight, portable e-readers; free video-conferencing software like Skype that enables us to communicate "face-to-face" with virtually anyone across the globe; easy-to-use high-definition recording devices and online distribution platforms that allow us to chronicle our lives and share them with family, friends, business associates, aquaintances, and even strangers. These are heady times.
Speculative fiction has always acted as a prophetic voice reflecting the technological advances of the time and using the author's imagination to propel those current events and ideas to fantastic heights of "what if." Many scholars and writers have examined what the Internet is doing to our brains. The information overload has added to worries that we're becoming a bunch of short-attention-spanned tech addicts. One thing that really fascinates me is the storytelling trends I'm seeing that I believe are a reflection of our times.
The television shows produced by J.J. Abrams, for example, depict non-linear plotlines, alternate realities, time-hopping adventures. From the hit series Lost to the terrific Fringe to the recently debuted Alcatraz (which has quickly become one of my favorite new shows), they epitomize in dramatic fashion the timeshifting, hypertextual characteristics of our present reality.
Abrams isn't the only one dabbling in such intentional or unintentional metaphoric fable-telling. American Horror Story, Once Upon a Time, and other programs in the traditional mass medium of television are also experimenting to some degree or another with similar tropes.
As spatial and temporal barriers are shattered by digital tools that turn ordinary citizens into film auteurs, techno-artists, citizen-journalists, or just eager consumers of the content that's becoming more and more prevalent, it will be interesting to see where our imaginations take us from here.
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