There is seemingly no limit to the excited claims surrounding the possibilities of databases to reconfigure authorship through data liberation and social empowerment. But of course, the database is not new. It just becomes more interesting when it’s integrated with network capabilities and virtual systems. These new tools let us play with how databases are used and what they do, and let us do more than just access the discrete documents they love so much to store.
Changing the context changes how we derive meaning from data, but with each new liberty we must admit a corresponding forfeit. Will the database really set us free?
The Form of the Database is Culturally Determined:
In her article on “Database Aesthetics” Victoria Vesna touches on the relationship of contemporary databases to a history of library projects which have attempted in different ways to amass and organize relevant cultural knowledge. She suggests that the organization systems of libraries, being of an inherently physical nature, “are not adequate for the vast amount of digital data in contemporary culture.” There is no question the physical archive cannot accommodate the contemporary “information overflow,” but I feel the root of this inadequacy is something other than a storage issue. It’s an issue of culture.
What does a database become when it’s liberated from the standard restraints of the physical world, and further, integrated into a social network? How individuals envision using a database informs the structure that database will take, just as the form of a database will frame how people engage with it. As opposed to the physical archive, the virtual database, with its theoretically unlimited informational real-estate and opportunity for broad social contribution, is able to open new questions:
1) Who gets to contribute?
2) What documents get to be stored?
3) How do we organize, access and use this information?
For all its strengths, the physicality of the library necessarily engenders an authoritative and hierarchical approach to the documents it houses. The networked, virtual database has the potential to be something much different, but what does this alternative represent?
What does the liberated database mean for authorship?
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