McDatabase

Databases as a whole affect the way people create media everyday. Databases structure and organize our information no matter if you are buying lunch or creating a sculpture made of a piece of marble. The database is the categorization and infrastructure, which these pieces of media (or food for my example) are intertwined. The largest database I feel now is Google. Google affects everyone, and anyone even if you are not online. Google categories people’s interests, search results, weather stats, books, just about anything. Articles written about a tribe of people who do not have Internet and have not touched civilization are put into the google database and are categorized. I design websites, and use databases to inspire my web design. For example you can go to Flickr’s Color Pickr and based on Flickr’s photo database select a specific color which to find images and create new media. The people who post these photos and categorize the colors are apart of this large database used freely by all who go to the website. Media by in large is created by databases, another example of this is the food industry. Food is mass produced, shipped in categories and presented to us in categories. If you end up at a McDonald’s (which I hope you don’t) you will see the categorization and database structure right in front of your eyes. Even further separated into smaller databases of categories if specific meals or value items. The database is used by librarians when shelving books, by a web programmer when adding metatags to allow for google and other web searches to find the information on your website, accountants use databases to structure money assets, photographers use databases to inspire them for new ways to take an image, and graphic designers use databases to create new designs for new “looks.” Although it may seem that an original idea may be behind a piece of art or a cheeseburger, I believe there is a database of information which is the basis for it all.