To me there is nothing better than a good story. From time to time I’ve been know to pick up a non-fiction book, but even my own vivid imagination is no substitute for the act of witnessing the candid gestures and subtle displays of emotion evoked from a storyteller.

Every community has a memory of itself.
Not a history, nor an archive, nor an authoritative record…
A living memory, an awareness of a collective identity woven of a thousand stories (from the Center for Digital Storytelling).

A friend of ours is a passionate (and talented) documentary filmmaker. And like any documentary filmmaker it’s his life’s mission to capture and share stories through a medium that takes focus, time and commitment. Over a recent dinner, the discussion moved to the rising concern among filmmakers regarding the rapid emergence of social media tools and the potential end to a beloved craft.

In the lengthy conversation that ensued it occurred to me that a critical element had been overlooked. So much time was spent talking about the technology that the underlining principle, or soul, had been completely misplaced. We had missed the quintessential point of many social media mediums and platforms, including digital storytelling, we forgot about “the story.”

I’ve encountered this same train of thought on a series of occasions – a fear, and therefore focus on the technology, and a loss of recognition for the greater underlining purpose. Though in this there’s comfort, especially for anyone intimidated in the slightest by the tools, the story and the art of storytelling is anything, but obsolete.

Storytelling is not a new concept. It’s ingrained in us as we have been sharing stories well before the onset of technology or even the articulation of speech. But what social media, and more specifically digital storytelling, does afford us is a wonderfully unique way to push creative boundaries as well as capture and share a limitless breadth of stories that would otherwise fade with each passing day. We’re simply reshaping the way stories are told as we’ve done for generations past and as we will continue to do for generations to come.

In the vain of digital storytelling check out Danielle Martin, the Center for Digital Storytelling and Stories for Change.