Ladies and gentlemen, gather around.
I would love to share with you a story.
Once upon a time
in 19th century Germany,
there was the book.
Now during this time,
the book was the king of storytelling.
It was venerable.
It was ubiquitous.
But it was a little bit boring.
Because in its 400 years of existence,
storytellers never evolved the book
as a storytelling device.
But then one author arrived,
and he changed the game forever.
(Music)
His name was Lothar,
Lothar Meggendorfer.
Lothar Meggendorfer put his foot down,
and he said, "Genug ist genug!"
He grabbed his pen,
he snatched his scissors.
This man refused to fold to the conventions of normalcy
and just decided to fold.
History would know Lothar Meggendorfer
as -- who else? --
the world's first true inventor
of the children's pop-up book.
(Music)
For this delight and for this wonder,
people rejoiced.
(Cheering)
They were happy because the story survived,
and that the world would keep on spinning.
Lothar Meggendorfer wasn't the first
to evolve the way a story was told,
and he certainly wasn't the last.
Whether storytellers realized it or not,
they were channeling Meggendorfer's spirit
when they moved opera to vaudville,
radio news to radio theater,
film to film in motion
to film in sound, color, 3D,
on VHS and on DVD.
There seemed to be no cure for this Meggendorferitis.
And things got a lot more fun when the Internet came around.
(Laughter)
Because, not only could people broadcast their stories throughout the world,
but they could do so
using what seemed to be an infinite amount of devices.
For example, one company
would tell a story of love
through its very own search engine.
One Taiwanese production studio
would interpret American politics in 3D.
(Laughter)
And one man would tell the stories of his father
by using a platform called Twitter
to communicate the excrement his father would gesticulate.
And after all this, everyone paused;
they took a step back.
They realized that, in 6,000 years of storytelling,
they've gone from depicting hunting on cave walls
to depicting Shakespeare on Facebook walls.
And this was a cause for celebration.
The art of storytelling has remained unchanged.
And for the most part, the stories are recycled.
But the way that humans tell the stories
has always evolved
with pure, consistent novelty.
And they remembered a man,
one amazing German,
every time a new storytelling device
popped up next.
And for that,
the audience --
the lovely, beautiful audience --
would live happily ever after.
(Applause)