Counting the ways ... again.

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Of course I compare lots of things to lots of other things, but there's a certain logic in searching for a metaphor for the internet. It helps us focus on just what it is about this technology that attracts us. During the time I was preparing this column I delivered a (rather old, but somewhat updated) lecture on how and why we search for information in an educational setting. In that lecture I show that a search engine finds a precise word or phrase, not a site about what we think is the subject we're searching for. I give an example of running a search on Shakespeare's 18th sonata: typing "shall I compare thee" into Google immediately brings up pages with the sonata. But that's not all it brings up. I show that it also brings up a page entitled "Shall I Compare Thee to a Printed Page" which happens (not at all accidentally) to be the title of a long-ago column.

So there was that comparison of long ago, and then one year later the examination of what using the information superhighway metaphor does to how we perceive, and use, the information. Two and a half years after that came the examination of the Commons and how they relate to P2P.

That being the case, there's nothing really new, either for me, or for lots of other people, in trying to find just what it is that internet use reminds us of. And refrigerator doors are most certainly not an original metaphor that started with me.

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Go to: Are there refrigerator doors in cyberspace?