22 Facts About Internet metaphors

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.

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.

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.

Metaphors of the Internet often reveal the intentions of designers and industry spokespeople.

The extent to which the Internet metaphors 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.

When it was introduced, the Internet metaphors created a linguistic gap as no literal expressions existed to define its functions and properties.

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 metaphors 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 metaphors appear in popular media and reflect pervasive cultural attitudes and perceptions.

However, uncertainty surrounding the structure and properties of the Internet metaphors was apparent in the newspapers of the 1990s that presented a vast array of contradicting visual models to explain the Internet metaphors.

Spatial constructs were utilized to make the Internet metaphors appear as a tangible entity placed within a familiar geographical context.

Internet metaphors frequently arise from social exchanges and processes that occur online and incorporate common terms that describe offline social activities and realities.

The majority of these types of Internet metaphors are based on the concept of various spaces and physical places; therefore, most are considered spatial Internet metaphors.

However, arguments against this type of ruling have claimed that the Internet metaphors is a borderless space, which should not be subject to the laws applied to places.

Visual metaphors are popular in conceptualizing the Internet and are often deployed in commercial promotions through visual media and imagery.

However, maps of Internet metaphors 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.

Many abstract visual metaphors based on organic structures and patterns are found in literature on the Internet's infrastructure.

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.

The typical result of this process are visual representations of the Internet metaphors that are elaborate and visually striking, resembling organic structures.