Are you a story teller or a tool maker?

Everyone is a tool maker or a story teller. I heard Steve Jobs make this comment and then he asked rhetorically to the audience, which are you? I thought it was a profound comment, although I am not sure why. Are there not tool users and story readers? But if Jobs said it, then it had to be an extraordinary observation. 

I thought about Jobs’  comment today as I attended a seminar in Kansas City, Missouri on Digital Story Telling. It was sponsored by Hallmark, the Kansas City Art Institute and a host of other organizations who are into digital story telling-loosely meaning films, ads and videos.

The keynote speaker was Frank Rose. Rose was a writer for wired magazine, wrote a book and now he is an expert on the future of digital story telling. In a few minutes, he gave a fascinating walk down media lane from oral stories, to print, to music and now to digital. He showed two slides which confirmed what we all know. Advertisers have left newspapers like the proverbial rats and the sinking ship. And print classifieds have dried up like a speck of water in the Sahara. Cliches still work.

The last time I read the classifieds in the Kansas City Star, most of the classified ads were from the Kansas City Star looking for people with on-line editorial and advertising experience. That example illustrates the problem.  Why? Because only a person, unwilling to acknowledge the dominant impact of on-line technology would presume that on-line digital experts are reading the classified print ads for jobs.

One thing that Rose said, struck me as naive. It made me look up from my iPhone and pay attention. He said that in the old days of  print media, power was centered in the pocket books of a few newspaper  owners. I was in agreement with this comment, after all, I have seen the movie about Randolph Hearst and am current on the Rupert Murdoch power scandal saga. However, Rose added that in the digital world the power is more widespread and is in the hands of the many Internet participants not just a few corporate owners. I disagree. The billionaire access owners still control Internet access points and information filtering is always an option. Cash is still King even in the Internet world. 

And when the Internet goes down, who do you call? There is a fascinating digital story to tell about the real power and control of the Internet. Who is the president of the Internet? I am not a tool maker.