This reading was a bit long and dry for me but I think I understood the underlying message in the end. Manovich describes the use of databases and how they differ to narratives. From what I understand, a database is a collection of items in which a user can view and navigate through. They also use different methods in storing and categorising this information. To put this into context, Manovich talks about the idea of ‘new media’ and how we have moved from a classical age (cinema, novels etc.) to the computer age. However, narrative used in cinema and novels are still used as society’s main form of cultural expression.

The reason why databases are so different to novels is because databases do not follow a narrative structure. Anyone can go into a database and search for different chapters of information whilst jumping back and forth between them. Websites are a good example of this for there is definitely no structure of narrative within them which Manovich states, “they don’t have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise, that would organise their elements into a sequence.” Manovich also believes that as a society, we do not want databases to appear as cultureless and cold, with only straight forward informative texts with no cultural meaning. It’s interesting how we are compelled to think this way, and that meaning must be applied to everything for it to be important.

Manovich also compares databases to video games. He argues that video games cannot be considered as hypertext for they do follow the idea of a narrative – a player must work their way through challenges and collect points to win a game. They differ from databases because as I said above, databases are storages of knowledge and information that doesn’t require an order.

The point I found most interesting in this reading was Manovich’s metaphor of the world being a database, “The world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts and other data records”.