Internet metaphors

Last updated

Internet metaphors provide users and researchers of the Internet a structure for understanding and communicating its various functions, uses, and experiences. An advantage of employing metaphors is that they permit individuals to visualize an abstract concept or phenomenon with which they have limited experience by comparing it with a concrete, well-understood concept such as physical movement through space. Metaphors to describe the Internet have been utilized since its creation and developed out of the need for the Internet to be understood by everyone when the goals and parameters of the Internet were still unclear. Metaphors helped to overcome the problems of the invisibility and intangibility of the Internet's infrastructure and to fill linguistic gaps where no literal expressions existed.

Contents

"Highways, webs, clouds, matrices, frontiers, railroads, tidal waves, libraries, shopping malls, and village squares are all examples of metaphors that have been used in discussions of the Internet." [1] Over time these metaphors have become embedded in cultural communications, subconsciously shaping the cognitive frameworks and perceptions of users who guide the Internet's future development. [2] Popular metaphors may also reflect the intentions of Internet designers or the views of government officials. Internet researchers tend to agree that popular metaphors should be re-examined often to determine if they accurately reflect the realities of the Internet, but many disagree on which metaphors are worth keeping and which ones should be left behind.

Overview

An earlier metaphor of the Internet was the information superhighway. Interstate 15.jpg
An earlier metaphor of the Internet was the information superhighway.

Internet metaphors guide future action and perception of the Internet's capabilities on an individual and societal level. [2] Internet metaphors are contestable and sometimes may present political, educational, and cognitive issues. [3] Tensions between producer and user, commercial and non-commercial interests, and uncertainty regarding privacy all influence the shape these metaphors take. [1]

Common Internet metaphors such as the information superhighway are often criticized for failing to adequately reflect the reality of the Internet as they emphasize the speed of information transmission over the communal and relationship building aspects of the Internet. [4] Internet researchers from a variety of disciplines are engaged in the analysis of metaphors across many domains in order to reveal their impact on user perception and determine which metaphors are best suited for conceptualizing the Internet. Results of this research have become the focus of a popular debate on which metaphors should be applied in political, educational, and commercial settings as well as which aspects of the Internet remain unaccounted for with current metaphors, limiting the scope of users understanding. [4]

Metaphors of the Internet often reveal the intentions of designers and industry spokespeople. "For instance, those who use metaphors of consumption and shopping malls will devote resources to developing secure exchange mechanisms. Broadcasting metaphors carry with them assumptions about the nature of interactions between audiences and content providers that are more passive than those suggested by interactive game metaphors and applications. Computer security experts deploy metaphors that invoke fear, anxiety, and apocalyptic threat" (Wyatt, 2004, p. 244). [1] The extent to which the Internet is understood across individuals and groups determines their ability to navigate and build Web sites and social networks, attend online school, send e-mail, and a variety of other functions. Internet metaphors provide a comprehensive picture of the Internet as a whole as well as describe and explain the various tools, purposes, and protocols that regulate the use of these communication technologies. [5]

Without the use of metaphors the concept of the Internet is abstract and its infrastructure difficult to comprehend. [6] When it was introduced, the Internet created a linguistic gap as no literal expressions existed to define its functions and properties. [2] Internet metaphors arose out of this predicament so that it could be adequately described and explained to the public. Essentially all language now used to communicate about the Internet is of a metaphorical nature, although users are often unaware of this reality because it is embedded in a cultural context that is widely accepted. [2] There are several types of metaphors that serve various purposes and can range from describing the nature of online relationships, modeling the Internet visually, [6] to the specific functions of the Internet as a tool. [4] Each metaphor has implications for the experience and understanding of the Internet by its users and tends to emphasize some aspects of the Internet over others. Some metaphors emphasize space (Matlock, Castro, Fleming, Gann, & Maglio, 2014).

Common recurring themes regarding the Internet appear in popular media and reflect pervasive cultural attitudes and perceptions. Although other models and constructed metaphors of the Internet found in scholarly research and theoretical frameworks may be more accurate sources on the effects of the Internet, mass media messages in popular culture are more likely to influence how people think about and interact with the Internet. [7]

The very first metaphor to describe the Internet was the World Wide Web, proposed in 1989. However, uncertainty surrounding the structure and properties of the Internet was apparent in the newspapers of the 1990s that presented a vast array of contradicting visual models to explain the Internet. [6] Spatial constructs were utilized to make the Internet appear as a tangible entity placed within a familiar geographical context. A popular metaphor adopted around the same time was cyberspace, coined by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer to describe the world of computers and the society that gathers around them. [2]

Howard Rheingold, an Internet enthusiast of the 1990s, propagated the metaphor of virtual communities and offered a vivid description of the Internet as "...a place for conversation or publication, like a giant coffee-house with a thousand rooms; it is also a world-wide digital version of the Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, an unedited collection of letters to the editor, a floating flea market, a huge vanity publisher, and a collection of every odd-special interest group in the world" (Rheingold 1993, p. 130). [6]

In 1991, Al Gore's choice to use the information superhighway as a metaphor shifted perceptions of the Internet as a communal enterprise to an economic model that emphasized the speed of information transmission. [6] While this metaphor can still be found in popular culture, it has generally been dropped in favor of other metaphors due to its limited interpretation of other aspects of the Internet such as social networks. [4] The most common types of metaphors in usage today relate to either social or functional aspects of the Internet [8] or representations of its infrastructure through visual metaphors and models. [6]

Social metaphors

Internet metaphors frequently arise from social exchanges and processes that occur online and incorporate common terms that describe offline social activities and realities. These metaphors often point to the fundamental elements that make up social interactions, even though online interactions differ in significant ways from face-to-face communication. Therefore, social metaphors tend to communicate more about the values of society rather than the technology of the Internet itself. [7]

Metaphors such as the electronic neighborhood and virtual community point to ways in which individuals connect to others and build relationships by joining a social network. [7] Global village is another metaphor that evokes the imagery of closeness and interconnectedness that might be found in a small village, but is applied to the worldwide community of Internet users. However, the global village metaphor has been criticized for suggesting that the entire world is connected by the Internet as the continued existence of social divides prevent many individuals from accessing the Internet. [6]

The electronic frontier metaphor conceptualizes the Internet as a vast unexplored territory, a source of new resources, and a place to forge new social and business connections. Similar to the American ideology of the Western Frontier, the electronic frontier invokes the image of a better future to come through new opportunities afforded by the Internet. [8] The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit digital rights group that adopted the use of this metaphor to denote their dedication to the protection of personal freedoms and fair use within the digital landscape. Social metaphors and their pervasive influence indicate the increasing importance placed on social interaction on the Internet.

Functional metaphors

Functional metaphors of the Internet shape our understanding of the medium itself and give us clues as to how we should actually use the Internet and interpret its infrastructure for design and policy making. [8] These exist at the level of the Internet as a whole, at the level of a website, and the level of individual pages. The majority of these types of metaphors are based on the concept of various spaces and physical places; therefore, most are considered spatial metaphors. [8] However, this aspect should not be considered the only defining feature of a functional metaphor as social metaphors are often spatial in nature.

Cyberspace is the most widely used spatial metaphor of the Internet and the implications of its use can be seen in the Oxford English Dictionary definition, which denotes cyberspace as a space within whose boundaries digital communications take place. [9] The implications of this spatial metaphor in discourse on law can be seen in instances where the application of traditional laws governing real property are applied to Internet spaces. [10] However, arguments against this type of ruling have claimed that the Internet is a borderless space, which should not be subject to the laws applied to places. Others have argued that the Internet is in fact a real space not sealed from the real world and can be zoned, trespassed upon, or divided up into holdings like real property. [11] [12]

Surfing the 'Net' is a metaphor that uses the spatial domain of the ocean to suggest that navigating the Internet is similar to the flow of surfing. Surfing in Hawaii.jpg
Surfing the 'Net' is a metaphor that uses the spatial domain of the ocean to suggest that navigating the Internet is similar to the flow of surfing.

Other functional metaphors are based on travel within space, such as surfing the Net, which suggests that the Internet is similar to an ocean. Mark McCahill coined 'surfing the internet' in an analogy with browsing a library shelf as an information space. [13] [14] Websites indicate components of a space, which are static and fixed, whereas webpages suggest pages of a book. Similarly, focal points of the Internet structure are called nodes. Home pages, chat rooms, windows, and the idea that one can jump from one page to the next also invoke spatial imagery that guide the functions that users perform on the Internet. Other metaphors refer to the Internet as another dimension beyond typical spaces, such as portals and gateways, which refer to access and communication functions. Firewalls invoke the image of physically blocking the incoming of information such as viruses and pop-up ads. [9]

Designers of computer systems often use spatial metaphors as a way of controlling the complexity of interfaces. Designers create actions, procedures, and concepts of systems based on similar actions, procedures, and concepts of other domains such as physical spaces so that they will be familiar to users. In designing hypertext, a system that links topics on a screen to related information, navigational metaphors such as landmarks, routes, and way-finding have often been implemented for users' ease of understanding how hypertext functions. [15]

Visual metaphors

Visual metaphors are popular in conceptualizing the Internet and are often deployed in commercial promotions through visual media and imagery. The most common visual metaphor is a network of wires with nodes and route lines plotted on a geographically based map. [6] However, maps of Internet infrastructure produced for network marketing are rarely based on actual pathways of wires and cable on the ground, but are instead based on circuit diagrams similar to those seen on subway maps. [16] The globe, or the Earth viewed from space, with network arcs of data flow wrapped around it, is another dominant metaphor for the Internet in Western contexts [6] and is connected with the metaphor of the global village. Many abstract visual metaphors based on organic structures and patterns are found in literature on the Internet's infrastructure. Often, these metaphors are used as a visual shorthand in explanations as they allow one to refer to the Internet as a definite object without having to explain the intricate details of its functioning. [6] Clouds are the most common of abstract metaphors employed for this purpose in cloud computing and have been used since the creation of the Internet. [17] Other abstract metaphors of the Internet draw on the fractal branching of trees and leaves, and the lattices of coral and webs, while others are based on the aesthetics of astronomy such as gas nebulas, and star clusters. [6]

Technical methods such as algorithms are often used to create huge, complex graphs or maps of raw data from networks and the topology of connections. The typical result of this process are visual representations of the Internet that are elaborate and visually striking, resembling organic structures. [16] These artistic, abstract representations of the Internet have been featured in art galleries, sold as wall posters, used on book covers, and have been claimed to be a picture of the whole Internet by many fans. However, there are no instructions on how these images may be interpreted. The main function of these representations has sometimes been explained as a metaphor for the complexity of the Internet. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive science</span> Interdisciplinary scientific study of cognitive processes

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science/artificial intelligence, and anthropology. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberspace</span> Concept describing a widespread, interconnected digital technology

Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, governments, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging. As a social experience, individuals can interact, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, direct actions, create artistic media, play games, engage in political discussion, and so on, using this global network. Cyberspace users are sometimes referred to as cybernauts.

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality or the understanding of time in terms of money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet culture</span> Culture that has emerged from the use of computer networks

Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visualization (graphics)</span> Set of techniques for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message

Visualization or visualisation is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of humanity. from history include cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek geometry, and Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary methods of technical drawing for engineering and scientific purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual communication</span> Method of communication

Visual communication is the use of visual elements to convey ideas and information which include signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, advertising, animation, and electronic resources. Visual communication has been proven to be unique when compared to other verbal or written languages because of its more abstract structure. It stands out for its uniqueness, as the interpretation of signs varies on the viewer's field of experience. The interpretation of imagery is often compared to the set alphabets and words used in oral or written languages. Another point of difference found by scholars is that, though written or verbal languages are taught, sight does not have to be learned and therefore people of sight may lack awareness of visual communication and its influence in their everyday life. Many of the visual elements listed above are forms of visual communication that humans have been using since prehistoric times. Within modern culture, there are several types of characteristics when it comes to visual elements, they consist of objects, models, graphs, diagrams, maps, and photographs. Outside the different types of characteristics and elements, there are seven components of visual communication: color, shape, tones, texture, figure-ground, balance, and hierarchy.

Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally interfered with another person's lawful possession of a chattel. The interference can be any physical contact with the chattel in a quantifiable way, or any dispossession of the chattel. As opposed to the greater wrong of conversion, trespass to chattels is argued to be actionable per se.

Internet identity (IID), also online identity, online personality, online persona or internet persona, is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. It may also be an actively constructed presentation of oneself. Although some people choose to use their real names online, some Internet users prefer to be anonymous, identifying themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information. An online identity may even be determined by a user's relationship to a certain social group they are a part of online. Some can be deceptive about their identity.

A virtual artifact (VA) is an immaterial object that exists in the human mind or in a digital environment, for example the Internet, intranet, virtual reality, cyberspace, etc.

Presence is a theoretical concept describing the extent to which media represent the world. Presence is further described by Matthew Lombard and Theresa Ditton as “an illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated." Today, it often considers the effect that people experience when they interact with a computer-mediated or computer-generated environment. The conceptualization of presence borrows from multiple fields including communication, computer science, psychology, science, engineering, philosophy, and the arts. The concept of presence accounts for a variety of computer applications and Web-based entertainment today that are developed on the fundamentals of the phenomenon, in order to give people the sense of, as Sheridan called it, “being there."

Identity tourism may refer to the act of assuming a racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, sexual or gender identity for recreational purposes, or the construction of cultural identities and re-examination of one's ethnic and cultural heritage from what tourism offers its patrons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of the Internet</span> Analysis of Internet communities through sociology

The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological or social psychological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships, and concepts of the self. Sociologists are concerned with the social implications of the technology; new social networks, virtual communities and ways of interaction that have arisen, as well as issues related to cyber crime.

Applied aesthetics is the application of the branch of philosophy of aesthetics to cultural constructs. In a variety of fields, artifacts are created that have both practical functionality and aesthetic affectation. In some cases, aesthetics is primary, and in others, functionality is primary. At best, the two needs are synergistic, in which "beauty" makes an artifact work better, or in which more functional artifacts are appreciated as aesthetically pleasing. This achievement of form and function, of art and science, of beauty and usefulness, is the primary goal of design, in all of its domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual analytics</span>

Visual analytics is an outgrowth of the fields of information visualization and scientific visualization that focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of space</span> Sub-discipline of sociology

The sociology of space is a sub-discipline of sociology that mostly borrows from theories developed within the discipline of geography, including the sub fields of human geography, economic geography, and feminist geography. The "sociology" of space examines the social and material constitution of spaces. It is concerned with understanding the social practices, institutional forces, and material complexity of how humans and spaces interact. The sociology of space is an inter-disciplinary area of study, drawing on various theoretical traditions including Marxism, postcolonialism, and Science and Technology Studies, and overlaps and encompasses theorists with various academic disciplines such as geography and architecture. Edward T. Hall developed the study of Proxemics which concentrates on the empirical analysis of space in psychology.

In computing, 3D interaction is a form of human-machine interaction where users are able to move and perform interaction in 3D space. Both human and machine process information where the physical position of elements in the 3D space is relevant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital architecture</span> Architecture using digital technology

Digital architecture refers to aspects of architecture that feature digital technologies or considers digital platforms as online spaces. The emerging field of digital architectures therefore applies to both classic architecture as well as the emerging study of social media technologies.

Spatial contextual awareness consociates contextual information such as an individual's or sensor's location, activity, the time of day, and proximity to other people or objects and devices. It is also defined as the relationship between and synthesis of information garnered from the spatial environment, a cognitive agent, and a cartographic map. The spatial environment is the physical space in which the orientation or wayfinding task is to be conducted; the cognitive agent is the person or entity charged with completing a task; and the map is the representation of the environment which is used as a tool to complete the task.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Embodied cognition</span> Interdisciplinary theory

Embodied cognition is the concept suggesting that many features of cognition are shaped by the state and capacities of the organism. The cognitive features include a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs and performance on various cognitive tasks. The bodily aspects involve the motor system, the perceptual system, the bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world built the functional structure of organism's brain and body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spatial computing</span> Extended reality and related technologies

Spatial computing is any of various human–computer interaction techniques that are perceived by users as taking place in the real world, in and around their natural bodies and physical environments, instead of constrained to and perceptually behind computer screens. This concept inverts the long-standing practice of teaching people to interact with computers in digital environments, and instead teaches computers to better understand and interact with people more naturally in the human world. This concept overlaps with others including extended reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, natural user interface, contextual computing, affective computing, and ubiquitous computing. The usage for labeling and discussing these adjacent technologies is imprecise.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Wyatt, S. (2004). Danger! Metaphors at work in economics, geophysiology, and the Internet. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 29(2), 242-261.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Jamet, Denis L. (2010). "What Do Internet Metaphors Reveal about Perception of the Internet?" (PDF). Metaphorik. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
  3. ↑ Johnston, R. (2009). Salvation or destruction: Metaphors of the Internet. First Monday, 14(4). Retrieved June 20, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Markham, A. N. (2003, October). Metaphors reflecting and shaping the reality of the internet: Tool, place, way of being. In Association of Internet Researchers conference, Montreal, Canada.
  5. ↑ Rudestam, K. E., & Schoenholtz-Read, J. (2010). Handbook of online learning: innovations in higher education and corporate training (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Dodge, M. (2008). Understanding Cyberspace Cartographies: A Critical Analysis of Internet Infrastructure Mapping. (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/thesis/chap_4.pdf
  7. 1 2 3 Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Tomaszewski, Zach (2002). "Conceptual Metaphors of the World Wide Web". Web Metaphors. Retrieved June 20, 2014.
  9. 1 2 Bittarello, M. B. (2010). Spatial Metaphors describing the Internet and religious Websites: sacred Space and sacred Place. Archived 2014-07-26 at the Wayback Machine Observatorio (OBS*), 3(4).
  10. ↑ Lemley, M. A. (2003). Place and cyberspace. California Law Review, 521–542.
  11. ↑ Graham, M. (2013). "Geography/Internet: Ethereal Alternate Dimensions of Cyberspace or Grounded Augmented Realities?" The Geographical Journal, 179, 177-182.
  12. ↑ Blavin, J. H., & Cohen, L. G. (2002). Gore, Gibson, and Goldsmith: "The Evolution of Internet Metaphors in Law and Commentary" Archived 2014-07-25 at the Wayback Machine Harv. JL & Tech., 16, 265.
  13. ↑ "There is a lot to be said for surfing the internet with gopher from anywhere that you can find a phone jack," wrote McCahill on the Usenet newsgroup alt.gopher on February 25, 1992 quoted at https://www.apl2bits.net/2019/10/21/library-computers-jean-armour-polly/
  14. ↑ Jean Armour Polly has been credited for “surfing the internet” published in a University of Minnesota library bulletin in June 1992, but McCahill had used the same phrase earlier in February 1992.
  15. ↑ Hsu, Y. C., & Schwen, T. M. (2003). The effects of structural cues from multiple metaphors on computer users’ information search performance. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58(1), 39-55.
  16. 1 2 Dodge, M., & Kitchin, R. (2001). Atlas of cyberspace (Vol. 158). Reading: Addison-Wesley.
  17. ↑ Reynolds, Steve (1984-12-04). "Kermit vs 4705?". Info-Kermit Digest (Mailing list). Kermit Project, Columbia University. Retrieved 24 February 2016. After some attempts I decided to ask the 'cloud' about this.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.