Metaphors Converging on the Internet

The internet is a strange and wonderful thing. It inspires fierce loyalty in some of its users, who see it as a forum of free expression and vow to defend it against all who would misuse it. It inspires visions of profit in other users, who are trying to harness its distribution powers for advertising purposes. Some observers see it as a vision of evil, where unscrupulous child molesters can lure innocent children away from their homes. Like the chameleon computers which make up its backbone, the internet seems to be a blank slate, or perhaps a blank screen. It encourages people to project their desires and fears into it, and it seems to do its best to conform to those projections. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the internet, see Krol, 1992.) Just what is the internet? On the technical level, it is a network of networks, connecting different computer networks so that these systems, based in different programming languages, can communicate with each other. It was designed by the U.S. Defense Department to provide communications even if one of its nodes was knocked out in an attack. To do this, the system breaks up all messages into little pieces, called packets, which then are routed through different parts of the network, and reassembled at the destination. Yet this technical definition does not tell us much about the cultural impact of the internet. United States culture is ambivalent about this network of networks. It has received a lot of media hype in the Nineties, but also much criticism. We can see this ambivalence in the changing metaphors used to comprehend the internet. Some metaphors imply that the internet is primarily a print medium. Thus it has e-mail, you can browse with your browser as you would in a bookstore, you can set bookmarks, and legal arguments have been made that each computer allows one to be a publisher. Many sites on the internet have also been described as cool, implying a low temperature, calmer experience similar to print. Other metaphors, however, imply that the internet is moving toward an electronic medium, that it is heating up. This is largely due to the Web, which includes graphics, color, motion, and sound. Metaphors of heat are being applied more and more to the internet, implying a high temperature, more frenetic experience similar to other electronic media. We have hot web sites, and hot links. Even staid old e-mail has produced flames, and flame wars. The internet is heating up because several technologies are converging upon it, to use yet another metaphor. In fact, we cannot see the internet except through this screen of metaphors. This article will discuss the above metaphors. My theme will be the shift from seeing the internet as primarily a print medium, and cool; to its present status as increasingly converging with television and other electronic media, and becoming hot. E-Mail The killer application of the internet was unforeseen by its developers. Electronic mail, or E-mail proved to be the network's main use for scientists, not sending sophisticated computer programs and results back and forth as had been anticipated. E-mail's popularity continues as the internet is being promoted to the general public in the Nineties. This powerful communication technology expands the scope and range of mediated interpersonal communication beyond anything available before (Gumpert and Cathcart, 1986). I use it myself, and find it taking up more and more of my day. Electronic mail is a handy metaphor describing what we do when we send messages across the internet. It implies the internet is a print medium. But the mail metaphor hides some aspects of what is new in this process - primarily the ease and speed at which messages are sent and received. This ease and speed can lead to significant differences between the print mail medium and the electronic mail medium. E-mail provides speed and ease approaching oral communication - we just type a message out, push a button or two, and it is sent. …