"Tell me a story."

It's one of the oldest requests. We asked it as children, and our children ask it of us, and we ask it of one another. "Tell me a story."

We marvel at "King Kong." We're enthralled at seeing the "Lord of the Rings." We're mesmerized at the sweep of "Star Wars." "Sky Captain," "Final Fantasy," and "Sin City" head into new realms. And who will forget, "Who Shot Roger Rabbit?"

Yet, at some point, all these projects were screenplays, or at least treatments. There was a story.

I was reminded of this as I listened to the commentaries of Jodie Foster and Robert Zemeckis each give their running account in the background as I watched "Contact" on DVD.

For Foster - the star - it was mainly about the story. For Zemeckis, it was more complicated, or as the top-level guy, Zemeckis had a wider range of responsibilities, but I could not help but notice how devoted he was to the technical aspects of the film. Perhaps he let Foster take care of the story and rather than be redundant, he gave his spin on what magic was done during the production.

There is no question that Drupal is growing, largely through word of mouth. Yet, go to the computer section at a well-stocked book store, and still there is precious little on the shelves about Drupal.

But breakthroughs, both large and small, are like that.

When calculus was first introduced, there were no text books on what Newton and Leibniz had discovered. The knowledge was largely word of mouth and it took one of the Bernoullis to put together a first pass book about calculus. It would be hundreds of more years before Thomas' Calculus would flood every modern scientific school of higher learning.

Part of what we are seeing is a moving target.

I once heard a graduate student put it this way,

The text books are at least a couple years behind the latest advances.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a growth in Web 1.0. This amid the pundits claim that Web 2.0 is the wave of the future.

Statistics from a Nielsen story titled Sponsored Link Advertising (PDF format) could be interpreted as a bellwether.

At pingVision, we get a stream of inquiries - proposed web development projects we are asked to consult on or develop. The projects seem to break into the two "visions" as it were - Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

It stands to reason that the older, more entrenched technology will be what the latest set of adoptors want to "get on the web."

I have to thank Melinda Casino on BlogHer for an interesting link about Oprah-gate. The blog she cites is called James Frey and the pornography of confession. and it appears over on "chandrasutra." The blog isn't so much about pornography as it is about public confessions.

It seems an author, James Frey, made up an "autobiography" and people believed it was his true-to-life personal story, or so my sources say who are following this story closer than I. Oprah then endorsed the book for her Book Club, only to find out later that it was a "manufactured" biography. At first I believed this furor to be a bit pedestrian; that is, until I read some of the pithy insights that raised a mirror to middle America. Why this scandal? Why the outrage? What exactly happened? Well ...

Hollywood on the run.

Hollywood is worried, although they have not yet had a full-blown panic attack. Their bedrock market - the one they have always taken for granted - is eroding beneath their feet. Generation X, is growing up and their tastes have changed. The once captive audience that grew up on the "Star Wars" movies that their parents took them to is finding that their own children are not nearly as impressed as the Gen-X parents once were with special effects.

But that is not the only place we are seeing changes.

Video games are capturing a bigger piece of the pie.

"If I had some time in the afternoon, and it was a choice between watching a movie or playing a game, I'd rather play a game," said Marlon Castro, 35, of Foster City.