Week 2 Story Lab Post

Manovich’s reading on databases was quite interesting especially when he asked whether narrative and databases have the same status in computer culture. This was a tricky question as they are almost polar opposites as databases as a culture form, represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. On the other hand, a narrative creates a trajectory based on causality of seemingly unordered items. There is common ground in terms of motivation and purpose the example given for a game and a novel the reader needs justification to progress further. There are media objects that explicitly follow a data base logic, while others don’t but the majority of them are databases. In new media, despite being labelled as linear narratives, interactive narratives or databases on the on the level of material organisation, they are all databases. This assumption of calling new media as a narrative rather than a database is due to the fact the narrative is used as an all-inclusive term. The fact that a database can support a narrative is a significant enough reason as to why databases occupy a large portion, if not the largest territory in the new media landscape.

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