Future Narratives (eBook)

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Christoph Bode,Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.

Preface and Acknowledgements 7
1 The Theory and Poetics of Future Narratives: A Narrative 13
1.1 Future Narratives: A New Kind of Narrative 13
1.2 What Narratives Do for You 16
1.3 Approaching the Future I: Great Shock – Utopian Tales No Future Narratives! 21
1.4 Approaching the Future II: The Unbearable Gravity of the Present 24
1.5 Capturing the Openness of the Moment: Some Basics About Nodes as Building Blocks of Future Narratives 28
1.6 Run Lola Run – Only a Pre-Cursor? 33
1.7 The Road Not Taken 36
1.8 Doing the Shuffle: Lola Runs Again, Books in Boxes, and Slatted Pages 37
1.9 Decision (Choice) Theory and Game Theory, in Relation to FNs 43
1.10 Into the Heart of the Matter: A Node’s Interior Life – Character, Space, Time 54
1.11 Nodal Power 59
1.12 Varieties of Nodes 61
1.13 Interactivity 63
1.14 Simulation 66
1.15 As Node Leads on to Node: Nodal Structures and Their Representations 68
1.16 Why ‘Narrative’ Anyway? 79
1.17 Stranger than Fiction: The Failure of Prediction, the Virtue of Scenarios, and Why FNs Are the Key to Our Future 87
1.18 The Human Brain as an ‘Anticipation Machine’ 109
1.19 The Way Ahead 117
2 Formal Models for Future Narratives 121
2.1 Introduction 121
2.2 Representations of FNs 121
2.2.1 Nodal Graphs 121
2.2.2 Aspects 124
2.2.3 Consequences 127
2.2.4 Reaching the same Situation in two different Ways 129
2.3 Quantification of Openness 130
2.3.1 The Spectrum of Consequences 130
2.3.2 The Spectrum of the Agent 139
2.3.3 The Degree of Openness of a Situation: Nodal Power 139
2.4 Advanced Models for Similarities 142
2.4.1 Similarity 143
2.4.2 Formal Definition for Models of Type II 145
2.4.3 Models of Type II without underlying Subtractive Aspects 147
2.4.4 Path Dependency of External Aspects 147
2.4.5 Computing Nodal Power in the Presence of External Aspects 149
2.5 Reversibility 151
2.5.1 Undoing Choices 151
2.5.2 Degree of Reversibility 151
2.6 Topological Classification of Future Narratives 153
2.6.1 The Topology of the Nodal Graph 153
2.6.2 Geometrical Classification: Homology Groups 157
2.6.3 Classification including Aspects: Cohomology Groups 160
2.6.4 Conclusion 165
2.7 Appendix: Basic Mathematical Concepts 166
2.7.1 Sets and Functions 166
2.7.2 Basic Graph Theory 167
2.7.3 Integration 168
3 Future Narratives: The Media-Historical Moment 174
3.1 The Historicity of ‘Future’ 174
3.2 The Probability Calculus 180
3.3 Insurances 189
3.4 Projects and the Stock Market: Great Expectations 197
3.5 The Coffeehouse and the Idea of Truth-as-Process 202
3.6 The Plot Thickens: The Modern Realist Novel 212
3.7 Future Narratives and Historical Mediality 219
Works Cited 229