Stories help us encode and understand our collective existence, underpin cultures, and help frame the possible. Describing the ecology of all human stories is an essential scientific enterprise. With the advent of the internet and massive digitization this vital work has become, in part, a data-driven one. There are many aspects of stories to characterize and here we take … [Read more...]
How our storytelling nature means we deeply misunderstand the mechanics of fame (and much else…)
Should the Mona Lisa be our most famous painting? Was Harry Potter destined to (repeatedly) sweep the globe? What would happen to everyone and everything famous if we ran the experiment that is our world over again? Find out why fame is truly unpredictable, how it lives and dies entirely in our social stories, and why "... there is no such thing as fate, only the story of … [Read more...]