The extract from Lev Manovich’s reading seemingly exposes his outlandish contradictions in regards to both Narrative and Database. The overall argument he’s trying to get across, I believe, is that we, as users of both narrative literature and computerised databses, are passive in our practice of both systems.

I don’t quite agree, and I don understand why he doesn’t try to admit that the traditional character in a narrative is now the person who is circumnavigating through this network of info?

This is the point where I instantly noticed how Manovich’s argument crumbles. His statement that narrative is fundamentally constructed, controlled and then dispatched to a “passive audience” is quite awkward. It reminds me of a media consumption theory that I studied in high school media classes, The Hypodermic Needle Theory.

Lev Manovich continues to construct a rivalry between the database and the narrative but fails to make note of the user’s involvement in and interpretation of the text. As far as I’m concerned, a database and narrative are essentially similar in how they achieve zilch until someone interacts with them. They are both purely cypher waiting to be decoded.