mark poster has some writing related to this in mode of information i think. however, i think that one of the things we have to be clear about is what this metaphor means, if anything, because a database is a fairly encompassing concept, everything from a simple text file with indexing and query, to xhtml/semantic web, xml systems, object oriented data repositories, acid/relational databases all can be thought of as databases. more and more it is less clear to me what we can consider not a database. for the most part, most cmc systems and many modern interfaces run off of some sort of data structure that very well could be thought of as a database. i mean one can make a text file, or data representation operate like a database or perhaps simulate a database by building an abstraction layer on it to provide that functionality, so is it a text file or a database? now, the real problem might be the reason why this matters, and i think that ends up being a question of political economy, ownership, production, rights, data freedoms, etc. which are less controllable in simple text even xml, than they are embedded as a data structure in a database... jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu on the ibook www.cddc.vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/blog () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments