Interfaces, Databases, and the Possibilities...
It seems to me that it would have been a privilege to meet Dr. Bush and Dr. Engelbart; to have been surrounded by two visionaries who were capable of not only envisioning what we would need, but who could already grasp the future cultural impact their concepts might have on our general tools of knowledge ? on my simple ability today to sit in a coffee shop and communicate with a dozen other classmates via blog.
Building on the ideas by Bush and Engelbart, Manovich asserts that the complexity and frequency of our interface options have moved us to a different era where ?not only work and leisure activities increasingly involve computer use, but also converge around the same interfaces? (Manovich, 77). The interfaces including those surrounding the printed word and cinema have changed from defined roles between work and personal use to become a general tool for creating, organizing, and distributing new media (80). The somewhat limitless interface options we have created have unwittingly tied the different aspects of our lives together. For example, the interfaces I use to share personal experiences and memories with family and friends (blogs, myspace, public digital image libraries) are also accessible to my professional colleagues; in many cases, I am creating, organizing, and distributing personal information in an interface where I am also working on a professional document or crafting a memo. Although the unlimited capabilities for information sharing are ideal and allow for unprecedented access I worry about how much may be too much. What, if anything, are we losing in the process of gaining so many technological advances?
According to Manovich, my information organizing ?further contributes to the anti-narrative logic of the Web? (Manovich, 196). So many interfaces yet so few stories are being told. Although I may perceive that I am telling my ?story? by sharing all of the information I provide throughout these different interfaces I am simply adding information to databases. Manovich argues that ?[r]egardless of whether new media objects present themselves as linear narratives, interactive narratives, databases, or something else, underneath, on the level of material organization, they are all databases? (Manovich, 201).
Although Bush and Engelbart imagined the endless possibilities of shared databases (as termed by Manovich) and the ability to call upon so much more then ?nibbles? of information, perhaps the positive aspect of their visionary new media comes at a cost. The next generation will have infinite information access but no narrative as to how the generation(s) before them lived their lives. Is there a way we can narrate the amount of data we now process? The more we use the interconnected knowledge webs created and sustained on our internet interfaces, the more we come to understand the value of having such access (practice makes perfect); can we create such a process for the practice of storytelling or is our ease of use with the current interfaces based on the simplification of data input?
Manovich writes ?in cyberspace we have to work to forget? (75) and according to the interfaces and databases we have created thus far (Bush and Engelbart would be proud) we might never have the option to forget again. My own presence has been seared in to the cultural interface to be retrieved in some way, some day by my grandchildren?s grandchildren. Won?t they smile with nostalgia then at my clunky 7 inch laptop and wireless network connection?
As Manovich so rightly cautions, perhaps the increasing mobility of our interfaces, although breaking us out of the screen prison we?ve been locked in, force us to now ?carry our prisons with us?to always ?be in touch?, always connected, always ?plugged in?? (Manovich, 113). Perhaps always is too much?