We know more about our lives
than any people in history.

Before the written record,
there was the myth.

It’s how we carried meaning forward when there was no other way.

Around fires, over seasons, in the face of loss, we told them differently each time: true stories that never happened.*

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

But it wasn’t just storytelling;
it was a compression format.

It transformed the raw data of lived experience into meaning that could be shared. Even with those not there.

Now we’re in the age of personal data: records and transcripts and screenshots.

We save everything, but we don’t know why.

We’ve forgotten how to tell the stories we’re living in.

And when we can’t tell them, we can’t know where we’re going.