Manovich's concept of Discrete Samples

From English 194 Wiki

Manovich states that “Media images, be they images, sounds, shapes, or behaviors, are represented as collections of discrete samples…[that] are assembled into larger-scale objects but continue to maintain their separate identities,” (Manovich, 30).

When examined as an entity, “The Facebook” consists of texts are made up of mutable words, and photographs that are capable of standing alone as well. Each piece of text in a person’s profile is in itself a statement about the individual, and each photograph is a representation of reality at a given moment in time. Facebook can be seen as an attempt to combine these individual pieces of self expression into a searchable database of information.