{"id":4382,"date":"2012-05-01T12:43:45","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=4382"},"modified":"2012-05-01T12:43:45","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T17:43:45","slug":"kurt-vonnegut-on-the-shapes-of-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=4382","title":{"rendered":"Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oP3c1h8v2ZQ\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to blog on the video circulating of Kurt Vonnegut talking about the <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/oP3c1h8v2ZQ\">Shape of Stories<\/a>. He describes the curves followed by popular stories like &#8220;boy meets girl&#8221; and suggests computers could even understand such simple curves. In Lapham&#8217;s Quarterly you can read the text of this lecture with illustrations. See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laphamsquarterly.org\/voices-in-time\/kurt-vonnegut-at-the-blackboard.php?page=all\">Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard<\/a>. In this version he asks about the value of such systems, a question which could apply equally to computer generated visualization,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The question is, does this system I\u2019ve devised help us in the evaluation of literature? Perhaps a real masterpiece cannot be crucified on a cross of this design. How about Hamlet?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He concludes that the system doesn&#8217;t work because the truth is ambiguous. We simply don&#8217;t know in complex works (like Hamlet) if news is good or bad. Good literature is open to interpretation.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But there\u2019s a reason we recognize <em>Hamlet<\/em> as a masterpiece: it\u2019s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [<em>indicates blackboard<\/em>]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don\u2019t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Many have noticed this amusing play on visualization including an infographic on Visua.ly, <a href=\"http:\/\/visual.ly\/kurt-vonnegut-shapes-stories\">Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/visual.ly\/kurt-vonnegut-shapes-stories\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/KurtVonnegutontheShapesofStories_4f3f279481686_w974.png\" alt=\"Plot visualization from Vonnegut\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to blog on the video circulating of Kurt Vonnegut talking about the Shape of Stories. He describes the curves followed by popular stories like &#8220;boy meets girl&#8221; and suggests computers could even understand such simple curves. In Lapham&#8217;s Quarterly you can read the text of this lecture with illustrations. See Kurt Vonnegut &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=4382\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-playful-or-cool","category-visualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4382"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4391,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4382\/revisions\/4391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}