Once Upon a Blog Post

Once upon a blog post, I watched a Ted Talks.

This Ted Talk features Joe Sabia, an iPad storyteller, giving an overview of the progress that has been made in the technology of storytelling in the last 200 years. The author states that while the stories being told have remained largely unchanged, the methods of telling them have always been evolving. During the entire talk, Sabia is projecting his iPad screen to the audience and is continually changing apps and the images shown to help support his message. He uses pictures, text, and music to help tell his tale. He is representing a new style of storytelling by talking about storytelling. He begins with the description of a book and how it never changed until Lothar Meggendorfer from Germany created the first pop-up book. After this, methods of storytelling became more numerous and more creative. TV, movies, talk shows, and the internet are all just evolved forms of storytelling. He ends his presentation by taking a picture of the audience and putting them on the screen, indicating that they are a part of the story.

The author's purpose in sharing this ted talks is to represent a new form of storytelling and giving a history of the progress that has been made in the art of storytelling. He is saying that even though what we are saying isn't changing, the way that we are saying it is. The ending implies that storytelling will continue to evolve past where we are now, as is its nature.

Joe Sabia is a storyteller, so his job is to (obviously) tell stories. This may make his argument seem less credible. The term storyteller is often associated with people who make things up or twist facts so that they suit their needs. This may make the author's message become somewhat misunderstood because of the stereotypes associated with his title. People will often assume that storytellers are making things up, not that they are retelling facts.

The author uses quite a bit of evidence to support his claim. He talks about and shows several different examples of the different ways that storytelling has advanced such as radio, TV, movies, internet, music, and more. The talk itself is framed as a story. It starts with the traditional Once upon a time and ends with a cliche and they all lived happily ever after. The presentation being framed as a story makes the author's argument pretty difficult to dispute. Because it is his job, it is possible that the author is bias in thinking that what he does is a true form of storytelling. Some people may believe that this unique method is too different to be truly considered a form of storytelling, and that would weaken the message that the author is trying to send.

The audience members are enthralled with this performance not only because the author continuously makes funny jokes that keep them interested and laughing, but he also makes the presentation easy to connect with. Sabia uses the visual of the iPad screen and many popular apps that can be used on it in order to tell him story. These are images that many people in this modern age see every day. The ideas are presented in a language that the audience understands and they will be more likely to agree because of it. 

I found this talk very interesting. The art of storytelling and the stories that are being told has always been a topic that fascinates me. The author said in his presentation that the stories that we tell don't change and that relates directly to the idea of the hero's journey (see my extended essay for more details). The idea of being able to communicating these stories in different ways has also always been interesting. For my personal project I even did a project relating to picture books (hmm, I'm seeing a pattern here...). This seemed like a topic that was very relevant to the things that I am interested in and definitely caught my attention when I started to watch it.

As the blog post came to an end, I reflected on what I learned and, along with the other IB students, lived happily ever after (well after we graduate that is).

The End