On Tuesday a copy of the Bay Psalm Book was auctioned for $14.2 million. This is a new world record for any printed book. This little book (it is little) was the first book printed in what was to become the United States. It was published in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts - so soon after the Plymouth colony was established in Massachusetts in 1620. The print run was about 1700 copies. Only 11 copies survive in the world. It's full title is - The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre. With a subtitle of - Whereunto is prefixed a discourse declaring not only the lawfullnes, but also the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance of singing Scripture Psalmes in the Churches of God. [all sics apply]
And then ... my mind began to 'think'. And so 'I' went along with it. (Why not?) It seems to me that the end of an era has already happened. I doubt that any 'first editions' of fiction published from today onwards will ever be sold at any auction for any price.
Works of fiction, stories, have travelled a long arc in how they are transmitted from the inspired (or not) author to the consciousness of the one being storyTold to. First there was oral transmission (and of course memory) only, to both storytellers and those being Told to ... and then handwritten script given to printers (oh what fun that iterative cycle must have been - just ask James Joyce!) ... and then we story creators had typewriters (hooray!) for both ourselves and those who typed for us ... then word processing (cool and now ubiquitous and taken-for-normal) ... publication outside 'paper' begins with audio and fiction on the early web ... then we have voice recognition on the input side ... and, on the production side digital books (and some digital books are digital-only, so the concept of 'first edition' is truly conceptually gone (going, going, gone, gone, gone)) ... and let's factor in that 'stories' were originally told (only told) ... and then told or read ... and then told, read or watched/viewed (bearing in mind that most of the latter stories have never been available in told or written formats) ...
... so ... what does the future bring? Virtual reality stories? May be. Where the experience will be storyLived as opposed to storyTold to. And then we will have joint creation, between the story receiver in the virtual world and the creators of the virtual world. Games are the joint creation of a story, because they are the creation of an outcome. We already have shared authorship of novels - especially in the SF/Fantasy realm. And, of course, multi-participent games create stories jointly. StorySourcing is bound to come, for some, if it has not already - an interative play on the games I played as a youngster where we would (drink) and write a line and pass it on to the next in the round at the party. Hah! That was fun at the time!
And steady state in all of this is Story itself and our 'need' for Story and stories. Just as mammal biology needs breath ... so consciousness (it seems) needs ... stories.
There are billions of stories told by ourselves to ourselves together, collectively, on Mother EAerth every hour. They are often called 'daydreams'. Because they never 'happen'. And the collective of daydreams, growing exponentially, is only one layer in the collective consciousness of thoughts that encircle us. Just as there is an atmosphere that is breathed ... so ... there is an aether (to deliberately choose to use an old-fashioned word for technical reasons) that is 'received' by each of us.
Once upon a time, long gone, stories were planted upon Mother EAerth to serve a purpose. The 'template' of Story was also planted. By Seeders and Caretakers. We do need to be careful of our consumption of Story. For, like all food and drink, we need to be careful of what we consume. Artificial ingredients create bad health. Consuming too much 'bad' food/Story causes ...
Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!
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