'Story is the Killer App…'

This essay, by Bill Marvel, will be published as the Introduction to Ten Spurs, Vol. 6, the Mayborn's anthology of the 10 best reported narratives and essays submitted to their annual writing contests.

If a Chicago company has its way, what you are holding in your hands someday soon will be produced by an algorithm, a set of calculations driving a computer. Not just the printing on the page, the typography, the layouts. That's already computers' work.

But the words, sentences and paragraphs. The stories.

According to Wired magazine, always a hound on the scent of this kind of thing, a company that calls itself — apparently without irony — Narrative Science has already created templates for…