数据巫师欲重塑ESPN叙事方式

    我们正在稳步地从一个质的世界走向一个量的世界，不仅仅是在科学领域，甚至在政治、运动、大众娱乐和其它创造性领域也是一样。

    面对这股潮流，很多抵御派感到消极失望，甚至是恼怒。这些抵御派大多年纪在45岁以上（但并不是说每个45岁以上的人都是抵御派），他们中的许多人认为数字失于精致，标准缺乏感情，数据没有戏剧性，而且数字化的视角不易于人类理解。他们这么想有充分的理由，而原因就存在于人类的DNA里。

    人类早就进化成为一种爱讲故事、爱读故事、爱听故事的生物。早在公元前2000年左右，美索不达米亚平原上就诞生了史诗《吉尔伽美什》（Gilgamesh），它也是现存最早的文学作品。从那时起，人类就开始用故事的形式解释我们的生活和我们的世界。故事不仅仅是我们探讨世界的方式，也代表了我们对世界的解读，如何把我们神经的冲动和反应结合起来，以理解我们当下所处的环境。而环境中有太多太多的数据点，不可能全部单纯地靠数字的方式来解决。

    对我们大多数人来说，我们熟悉的叙事习惯已经被数据颠覆了，尤其是自从2005年左右以来。现在，我们不必在一串打包整合的故事中听我们想听的内容，而是可以直接选择我们想要听到、观看到的那一部分内容。

    观看体育节目的时候，与其看完整场比赛，人们更爱看精彩时刻。以至于美国国家美式橄榄球大联盟（NFL）的一支橄榄球队甚至考虑在比赛的过程中，在球馆的记分板上播放NFL的RedZone频道。音乐方面，人们更喜欢听某几首歌曲，而不是听完整个专辑。甚至人们对图片和视频中的影像的喜爱超过了真实的生活体验。比如你到任何体育比赛或音乐会去转转，你就会发现，我们大多数人更感兴趣的是捕捉下这一刻的镜头，而不是真实感受它。也就是说重要的不是参加这个活动，重要的是告诉全世界我参加了这个活动。现在很多人觉得，我们通过一块高清屏幕就可以体验整个世界。事实也的确如此，从今年夏天开始，我们只要戴上一个能上网的现实增强技术的眼镜，就可以把我们自己和屏幕融为一体，用数字化的手段解读世界。

    这一切意味着，如果你的年龄在25岁以下，那么你很有可能将成为继《吉尔伽美什》叙事时代之后，一个新时代的主动参与者。

    但是数字化的生活并不是生活的本质。

    要想深刻地传达信息——不论是因果论、原理、洞见、喜剧或是戏剧，要想真正感动观众——不论他们是一个人还是一百万人，数据仍然需要会讲故事，因为人们生来就是感情动物。

    对于在数码时代仍然关心怎样讲故事的人来说，问题是我们怎样能同时取二者的长处？如何建立一种新的叙事方式，让它既涵盖了量化的需求，也照顾了质的需求？

    坦率地说，电视在这方面做得很差，而体育节目尤其不擅长把数据统计创造性地融入到节目里，最多只不过是把比赛的分数和时间显示在电视上。体育节目很擅长为我们带来多个实时信息流，但是非常不擅长利用数据给我们观看的内容带来任何新的维度。

    We are steadily moving from a qualitative to a quantitative world, not just in the sciences but also in politics, sports, mass entertainment and many other creative endeavors.

    The old guard—mostly over 45 (but not everybody over 45!)—is somewhere between despondent and angry over this state of affairs. Many of these people feel that numbers lack nuance, that measurements lack emotions, that data lack drama, and most of all that numerical insight lacks human understanding. And they've got good reason to feel this way, because it's in their DNA.

    Human beings have evolved as storytellers, readers and listeners. Dating back to at least 2000 BC and the writing of the Gilgamesh—the epic poem from Mesopotamia, regarded as the first surviving piece of literature—we have explained our lives and the world around us in story. Narrative is not just how we discuss the world, it's how we interpret it, how we bundle our neurological impulses and responses to make sense of our immediate environment, which has far too many data points for us to ever live solely by the numbers.

    But narrative has been digitally disrupted for most of us, since the mid-aughts. Now, instead of experiencing a packaged story we're able to simply choose the bits and pieces we want to read, listen to, or watch.

    In sports, watching highlights has trumped the experience of the game, so much so that one NFL team is considering showing the RedZone channel on their stadium scoreboard during games. In music, songs have trumped albums. Images captured as pictures and video now trump the experience of life—go to any sporting event or rock concert and it's clear that most of us are far more interested in capturing the moment than truly experiencing it. It's no longer about being at the event, as much as it's about showing the world that you were at the event. Many of us now feel we can experience the world through an HD screen. Indeed, as of this summer we can merge ourselves with the screen by putting on a pair of internet enabled glasses that provide us with a steady stream of augmented reality and digitally annotates our life.

    All of which means that if you are under 25 there's a good chance you are an active participant of the first generation since the Gilgamesh not compelled to put life into a narrative, if for no other reason than you're too distracted.

    But the bits of life are not the guts of life.

    In order to communicate causality, theory, insight, comedy or drama in depth—in order to truly move audiences, whether they be one person or millions—data still need narrative, because people are hardwired to be moved by emotion.

    For those of us who care about storytelling in the digital age, the question has become how do we get the best of both? How do we create new forms of storytelling that incorporate the quantitative into the qualitative?

    Television, frankly, has been awful at this. And sports television in particular has been surprisingly awful at creatively integrating statistics into its coverage. For the most part it has simply littered the screen with scores and tickers—it's done a great job of bringing us multiple streams of real-time information, but it's done a lousy job of using data to bring any new dimension to what we're watching.