Internet metaphors
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.
"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.
[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.
[6] When it was introduced, the Internet created a linguistic gap as no literal expressions existed to define its functions and properties.
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.
Common recurring themes regarding the Internet appear in popular media and reflect pervasive cultural attitudes and perceptions.
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).
[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.
[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.
The most common visual metaphor is a network of wires with nodes and route lines plotted on a geographically based map.
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.
[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.
