Tell Me a Story ─ Narrative and Intelligence

How are our memories, our narratives, and our intelligence interrelated? What can artificial intelligence and narratology say to each other? In this pathbreaking study by an expert on learning and computers, Roger C. Schank argues that artificial intelligence must be based on real human intelligence, which consists largely of applying old situations - and our narratives of them - to new situations in less than obvious ways. To design smart machines, Schank therefore investigated how people use narratives and stories, the nature and function of those narratives, and the connection of intelligence to both telling and listening. As Schank explains, "We need to tell someone else a story that describes our experiences because the process of creating the story also creates the memory structure that will contain the gist of the story for the rest of our lives. Talking is remembering." This first paperback edition includes an illuminating foreword by Gary Saul Morson.

Roger C. Schank is Director of the Institute for Learning Sciences and John Evans Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Psychology, and Education at Northwestern University.