Databases as symbolic form

Databases exist everywhere, and plays a huge part in our lives. How else are we going to remember ALL of your friends’ details if not thanks to Facebook? Or all your contacts in your phone? All this information is stored in a database, what Manovich calls “structured collection of data.”

Some examples include the traditional CD-ROMs, floppies, and DVDs, which also inspired new database genres. According to Manovich, where databases really flourished is on the Internet. He explains,

“The open nature of the Web as medium means that the Web sites never have to be complete – and they rarely are because the sites are always growing.”

Web pages are ever growing databases – new links, images, audios and videos are being added to existing content. This form of data storage conforms to the antinarrative logic of the Web, meaning it is a collection, not a story. Some examples include the popular online audio distribution platform, Soundcloud, which allows users to upload and share their own content. Wikipedia, which allows basically anyone to contribute content to an ever-expanding database. The list goes on and on.

To explain algorithm, Manovich used an example of the classic game, Tetris. And in any first-person shooter games, how a player improves is by grasping the algorithms of the game itself, like under such-and-such conditions. The user is trying to build a mental model of the computer model.

“Any process or task is reduced to an algorithm, a final sequence of simple operations that a computer can execute to accomplish a given task.”

To further explain how algorithm works in a game, a genetic code was implemented to a game of Tetris, and it was endless.

“The world is reduced to two kinds of software objects that are complementary to each other:  data structures and algorithms.”

Data structure is, data organized in a way for efficient search and retrieval. Data structure of a computer and its algorithm works inversely. Together, according to a computer, data structures and algorithms are two halves of the ontology of the world. So, data structures and algorithms drive different forms of computer culture – databases correspond to data structure, and narratives correspond to algorithms. In computer programming, data structures and algorithms are both equally crucial for a program to work.

“Databases becomes the center of the creative process in the computer age.”

Could we ever live without databases? I doubt it.