Someone sent me an article that suggested that "The Internet is Killing Storytelling." The author contents that no one can think in more than 140 characters any more, and that the skills needed to create and listen to an extended narrative are disappearing.

"...the primary victim of this radically reduced attention span [is]the narrative, the long-form story, the tale. Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment." Paradoxically, there has never been a greater hunger for narrative, for stories that give shape and meaning to experience."

Even as he bemoans the demise of narrative, Ben Macintyre finds signs of life in Japanese thumb novels, or keitai shosetsu. There are book readers for the iPhone, and Amazon claims that people buy more books after they get a Kindle than before.

Can something as basic as sharing a story really be killed off so easily?

Stories have survived the invention of writing, the printed book, movies, animation, and even hypertext. The form may change, but I'm betting that we will keep finding ways to include stories in our lives.