Thankfully this week’s reading resonated with me a little stronger than last. Focusing on the first instalment, ‘Database as Symbolic Form,’ it explored why databases don’t follow the narrative structure we’re so used to seeing in many forms of cultural expression like novels and cinema.

This got me thinking about the structure of our impending Mixed Media Creative Critical Essay and the correlation with how hypertext is used in new concepts of narratives. Writing has transcended the traditional form and with the rise of the blog and online journalism, links coming and going from every which way allow users to end up somewhere other than where the author intended to lead them.

Databases appear as a collection of items on which the user can perform various operations: view, navigate, and search.

The above quote is the simplest way I could’ve explained the nature of databases and why they don’t follow the linear narrative we’re so used to seeing. A database and how it is navigated is similar to what our reality is like, not necessarily linear, and ultimately an unstructured collection of happenings created by the user’s operations.

The most obvious database that comes to mind is one’s digital music library. There are various ways to organise, play, and search through an iTunes library.

I particularly found the section titled ‘Database and Narrative’ useful in understanding the particulars between the two contrasting sides. Put simply:

Narrative: cause-and-effect of seemingly unordered items. Algorithms aren’t necessarily needed to proceed through narrative.

Databases: a list that is not ordered, corresponds to data structures.

However, these two mechanisms do not have the same status in computer culture. In terms of new media objects, regardless of how they present themselves, underneath they are all databases, and databases are dominant in the new media landscape.

I thought I’d check out a few of my classmates posts this week as I felt a bit stuck in what I could publish for the Week 3 posts.

In doing so, I began on Maëlle’s blog and she had a post regarding hashtags (with some pretty kick ass photos from the #foodporn Instagram hashtag, if I may say so myself), but then the post led me to where she got the hashtag post reference which was from Georgina’s blog.

This just got me thinking with how I (and from what I can tell, a lot of my friends) browse the Internet. How often have I found myself watching something, then Googling it… and the next thing I know I’m on YouTube watching something completely irrelevant and 5 hours has passed? Too often.

Just for reference, I’d recently become entangled in watching The X-Files. Just this past Australia Day weekend, I shot through the first season (24 45 minute episodes, mind you). Now not only did I sit and watch these episodes, but after almost every episode ended, I’d find the review on AVClub and read not only the recap, but the user comments. More often than not the user comments consistently link to something else, only sometimes they’re slightly relevant. For example, one of the links led me to a techno remix of dialogue from the show:

Kind of relevant, yes. But according to my Safari history, I then clicked on True Facts of Truth with Jimmy Fallon and Zach Galifianakis which is clearly of zero relevance to what I was initially in search of.

… and I still wonder where my time goes.