1 Margins of Digital Databases: Dialectics between Database and Narrative

A new mode of organizing information has emerged and become dominant in the era of new media: a digital form of database. The relational database that has recently taken a predominant position among other types of databases, for instance, offers a way to query it with the set-theoretic operations, produces automatically organized tables of data elements according to the attributes, and thus results in its self-describing structure in which formal logics will determine the arrangement of contents. Moreover, considering that database and narrative represent two distinct and major modes of organizing information there would be strong temptation, as Lev Manovich presented, to regard them as natural enemies. Narrative, however, still remains the necessary ‘Other ’ to the ontology of (relational) database, functioning as an effective counter means to the tendency of ‘monopoly of knowledge ’ by database as a monopoly of knowledge always invites competition from inside as well as outside