Monday, October 27, 2008

Lev Manovich:The Database Response

The Database by Lev Manovich was an interesting and at times confusing article. The article didn't seem really like fact but mostly the author's perspective on the topic. I thought the article was about "The Database", which I think is the way humans as a society or cultural perceive information about the world, their lives and technology in the modern computer age. He discusses that not all new media objects are only databases. An example of this would be called an "algorithm". A computer game would be an algorithm. A database in it's cultural form is the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. A narrative creates a cause and effect situation of unordered items of info. Both forms are apparently competing for the same territory of the human culture, each one trying to explain that there way is the better way of figuring out the meaning of life. I thought this article could have been an easier read in that the information he was giving me seemed to go in one ear out the other.

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