Machines Pensantes

It's been nearly a year now since a couple of McSweeney's alums released The Silent History, a story in app form about a near-future epidemic of EPR—EMERGENT PHASIC RESISTANCE, "a congenital disorder characterized by the inability to generate or comprehend language of any kind." It was all very meta—a story about the loss of language, which of course is the tool we use to tell stories, that was itself a re-tooling of the way we tell stories. It was also beautifully written and published and inventively structured—an intriguing exploration of new possibilities for narrative. But now that it's been out for awhile, what does it tell us about the future of storytelling? 

Jay Bushman is an Emmy-winning transmedia producer, show runner and writer. He was behind the Jane Austen inspired, tremendously successful, 153 episode series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and more recently, its 27 episode summer spinoff Welcome To Sanditon. An innovator in the way we experience narrative entertainment, Bushman is the co-founder and leader of the group Transmedia Los Angeles, the creator of the Fourth Wall Studio series Dirty Work, and the genre-defying, animated steampunk show Airship Dracula. He’s comfortable telling stories that cross platforms in unexpected ways: Viewers of his work may jump from YouTube to Twitter, to LinkedIn, to Facebook, Tumblr, OkCupid and more over the course of one character’s brief conversation with another.

Seth Rosenblatt:  "Comics fans are getting a double-dose of digital innovation this summer, as DC Comics lets you choose your own Batman adventure and revel in new tales of the campy '60s Batman."