Ken Harper: Sure. Actually I think what will happen, and we're already seeing it happen, is that the tools for enabling digital storytelling are going to get much simpler. There are going to be tools that a professional will want to take advantage of. They'll be tools that a serious hobbyist who aspires to professional quality will want to use. Then there will be tools that absolute novices will use. We have seen things like that under development here at Intel. Things that enable you to capture a video image, or capture audio, or capture a scanned image, storyboard it, export it into HTML, then post it to the Web.

There is some really interesting work being done within the Intel architecture lab on human factors. About why people want to use computers. What drives them. One particular demographic that was studied were seniors. Seniors wanted to get on the Web for two reasons. One was to have better ways of managing their investment portfolios. The second was simply to connect and to tell stories. To leave a legacy behind. Some of the storytelling technology that I just described is actually being used in some experiments here in Portland, Oregon with seniors who are in homes. It's quite remarkable, the things they want to tell and share. Clearly they want to have a response back.

That, number one, is going to be a big boost. The various demographics not thought of as computer users will use them because they'll enable you to do something so natural. The second thing is, based on a seminar that Intel put on a couple weeks to a month ago for Web agencies in the [bay area]. There was a panel where there were representatives from [GeoCities], and a representative from [CNN Interactive], somebody from Warner Brothers, and I forget who else. The thing that struck me was that both the representatives from [GeoCities] and more importantly the guy from [CNN Interactive] said that with all due respect to Intel, the thing that wasn't required at this point was more technology. What's needed is better techniques in telling stories. However, what they didn't realize is that one of the ways that you can get better techniques in storytelling, to tell better stories, is by having better technology. By having technology that more greatly facilitates that.

Interviewer: Oh I agree with you.

Ken Harper: Again I think that this is going to be a really explosive growth area.

Interviewer: Right. The opening chapter of our book is this concept that I've been pushing for about a year, [The Memory Box]. Simply the idea in the early part of next century people like my three year old son will essentially be storing a life's worth of portfolio at a very easily index-able and accessible retrieval methodology that allows him to construct meaning almost in conversation. For example, he can say "Oh, that reminds me -- and I can show you." The social implications, cultural implications, and health implications of being able to reconstruct aspects of one's memory from a very early age on, are to me part of the cyber culture that I've heard very few people talk about. To me, obviously, I think story is the key to the whole thing.

I also have a lay interest in cognitive theory and developmental theory. I think there are a bunch of implications about our whole understanding about what learning is that are changing. Part of that paradigm seems also based very closely to a more complex understanding about the role of story in our lives.

Ken Harper: Right. Right.

Interviewer: Whether that's at high levels of theoretical and scientific intelligence, or the kind of social or emotional intelligence that we all need to function in as chaotic or complex societies as we are functioning in at this point.

Ken Harper: Right. I think too that the nice thing about story, because we have such a text based background, at least many of us do. We don't recognize that story can be sound. It can be music. It can be multimedia, as debased and abused as that term has become. I see this with my children, and the way they engage with each other. We tell stories every night, and clearly there are musical elements that come in that we would not see if we were simply reading out of a book. There are other things that get introduced and occur differently than they would if they were coming off of a film or television show.

My daughter has some learning disabilities. She is extremely gifted musically, but her ability to read is below that of her peers'. This past year at school the one area that she really wanted to work on and would bring home had to do with storytelling. Digital storytelling if you will, using a multimedia tool. The name escapes me now. She was extremely proud of her ability to put together stories in that format. Which were for her more easy than simply to write something on a page. This may get us into the whole notion of multiple intelligences, but you will see people who have been perhaps squeezed out of mainstream expression because they didn't communicate entirely linearly. Now they have greater access and a greater role.

Interviewer: I think those are unquestioned. I've done work with dyslexics and other disabled people. There is no question to me that we are unlocking an enormous wealth of stories that are silenced simply because of the dominant paradigm of text based literacy.

Ken Harper: Right. Right.

Interviewer: I can't think of anything else to add. Do you have any final shots, thoughts, futures --?

en Harper: We are just starting out here. What will be interesting will be to talk in a year or two and see where we have gone. I'm so excited about the potential. I see digital storytelling becoming something so obvious to us that we won't see it in five years. [It will be the old line that you can't see the fly is in your eyes, 'cause the fly is in your eyes.] People will be doing it, and you'll wonder why we even bothered referring to it as digital storytelling back in 1998. I'm very [buoyant] about this. I should add that virtually everyone I talk to who is in the position of putting on conferences, or public venues immediately asks me to appear or to send someone who can appear. There's a tremendous amount of interest in this. I think [it will get launched].

Interviewer: I agree with you. With that we'll stop the machine.