dekstop: weblog

Finally had a brief glance over Lev Manovich's "Database as symbolic form" (can't remember why I bookmarked it), was underwhelmed. Nobody who is familiar with the structures of either modern culture or technology will find much new ideas in there. (Granted, it's from 1998.)

But there was one paragraph that made me think:

As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world.

Regardless of whether one agrees with all of the assessments in that paragraph (it's easy to disagree with several) the core of it seems to be the observation that "databases" as well as "narrative" are simply different ways to structure information. Like in that unfunny Apple UK commercial: You can tell a story with videos and a slideshow, or with pie charts.

Of course these methods to structure information have different characteristics in the way they treat it: a story is often most interesting in its evocative effects, in the underlying narrative that is not actually put into words. Whereas a "database" (e.g. a tagging system) is usually most interesting because it not only describes, but allows to rearrange.

If at this point you feel the need to call this difference "connotation vs. denotation" and be done with it you're wrong however, Mr. Straw Man. Both are obviously powerful tools, serving different purposes.

The interesting bit to me is simply this: We're gradually finding out new ways to structure information that in certain contexts can be much more powerful than the old ones. This is why people use Flickr and stopped making photo albums. This is why YouTube is so interesting, even if most of its content is still shit. This is why we now use del.icio.us to read up on trends in technology and stopped reading magazines. Why digg might replace certain parts of CNET.

Story (to keep in line with Manovich's annoying decision to talk about database) is simply not the most efficient method any more to convey any kind of information. In the olden days people maybe wrote poems and songs to transport political news. Today we email links.

None of which are new ideas I guess, but hey it's 3:08am where I am, and you're reading this on a blog, so what can you expect.