Have the number of stories and story lines increased in the past century?
At the beginning of the century we had stories offered to us in the form of books, texts, newspapers, magazines, traveling street story tellers, family stories and good stories as part of every conversation. There were also stories in songs, musicals and in the theater.
At
the end of the century we had all of the above plus, movies,
television, Cable TV, radio, the Internet and a variety of storage
media such as tapes, CDs, records, videos and media archives.
Have
the number of stories and story lines increased? I think the answer is
yes but I have no reliable way to measure it. I know that Spike Lee
brought new black characters and new story lines into our purview. I
suspect other new stories came from our contact with far different
societies and cultures, via immigration.
We also have a few new story lines from our historical experience:the Holocaust, the genocidal quality of strong government (communists included), the birth of a New Israel, the failure of central communist planning and the recognizable connection between personal freedom and free markets.
I hope someone will work on this question.