Data Management: From Beowulf to IBM

From the 1990s to the present, groups like the Center for Digital Storytelling and Tech Head Stories have helped artists use new media to create engaging, experimental works.  While the availability of new technology has taken the art of storytelling in new directions, some researchers are looking backwards, exploring the ways in which the narrative structures and interpersonal connections found in oral literature help transmit knowledge, maintain a sense of shared identity, and strengthen human relationships.

The field of research covers a vast range of topics:  jokes, epic poetry, company histories, and everything in between.  Oral communications become a form of information technology, with the barbarian meter of Beowulf and the repetition in the “Three Little Pigs” ways of recording and communicating data.  While storytelling offers an unbelievable level of flexibility and creativity, managers realized their understanding of narrative as a whole and informal social communications within modern institutions remained fuzzy. 

The Knoweldge Socialization Project at IBM Research explored the topic in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Framing face-to-face storytelling as a form of “tacit knowledge transfer,” the folks at the Watson lab examined how stories evolved, the choices made by orators, and how the audience’s response affected learning and social relations.  In the long term, the project hoped to explore how the development of a “storytelling culture” within modern organizations would contribute both to information management and our understanding of human computer interaction. 

This interest continued in the new century.  The Smithsonian Associates hosted conferences on storytelling as a “passport to success” in business, organizational development, social relations, and art in 2001 and 2003, while an article by Stephen Savides in the 12 November 2002 Christian Science Monitor traced the importance of individual memory and personal communication in continuity and efficiency.  Savides’s work revealed the growing importance of oral histories as retirement-related turnovers alter the knowledge base and new employees search for a sense of institutional identity.