Thanks for the references. I haven't seen these, but the ideas have been around since the mid-60s by virtue of a number of the researchers back then having delv

Thanks for the references. I haven't seen these, but the ideas have been around since the mid-60s by virtue of a number of the researchers back then having delved into McLuhan, Mumford, Innis, etc. and applied the ideas to the contemplated revolutions in personal computing and networking media we were trying to invent. I think a big point here is that going to a network culture doesn't mandate losing narrative, it just makes the probability much higher for people who are not self-conscious about their surrounding contexts. If we take a look at Socrates (portrayed as an oral culture genius) complaining about writing -- e.g. it removes the need to remember and so we will lose this, etc. -- we also have to realize that we are reading this from a very good early writer in Plato. Both of them loved irony, and if we look at this from that point of view, Plato is actually saying "Guess what? If you -decide- to remember while reading then you get the best of both worlds -- you'll get the stuff between your ears where it will do you the most good -and- you will have gotten it many times faster than listening, usually in a better form, and from many more resources than oral culture provides". This was the idea in the 60s: provide something much better -- and by the way it includes narrative and new possibilities for narrative -- but then like reading and writing, teach what it is in the schools so that a pop culture version which misses most of the new powers is avoided.