The Database Narrative

Information has historically been passed on in stories. Oral histories and then written were folded into narratives that made the facts function in an engaging way. Perhaps this function is because it is easier, or simply more fun and engaging for the human brain to remember stories than it is to recall facts. As much as we love random facts, stories are what move us; it's the story of the people living with the effects of global warming rather than the pure logistical facts of it that make up engaged. Perhaps it's simply because we are people, who think in narrative forms about themselves (IE the phrase "that's the story of my life") which makes narrative forms more relatable to us.

The pure amount of information generated today requires a database structure, a paring down of the story to it's meat if you will. The database is a convenient place to store information, but the information only truly comes alive to us after it is used in some narrative form. Language itself is a database of words, letters and meanings that only makes sense to us when we organize it into a structure, of sentences and stories. Like language, the possible narratives that can come from a database are infinite. Just as 100 hundred people will write slightly different stories about the same event using the same 'facts' of what happened on their facebook or twitter accounts, the narrative aspect of information is subjective and ever changing.

Humans have been finding narratives in the database of nature and experience since the advent of language. It is perhaps what makes us human. Animals live lives full of adventures and experience that could easily easily be thrilling narratives (as Disney knows very well) but lack the ability or interest to string them into stories, so since Aesop we've been doing it for them.