The Internet, figuratively speaking

Bombs explode in Marrakech: suspect learned these methods on the Internet

This was the title of  France Soir’s article published at the beginning of May. It’s a title that catches the attention of my inner pro-Internet user. If the perpetrator looked up how to make bombs in a book, would they have titled the article “Suspect learned to make bombs with books?”

My sardonic comment isn’t insignificant –  in fact it reveals something essential about how we think about the web. These titles use different metaphors to talk about the Internet. My sarcastic version describes the Internet as an information hub, and France Soir’s title alludes to the Internet as a place – an unregulated, savage place where anyone can just look up recipes for bombs. It appears to be a physical place, because it’s there that the suspect learned how to develop bombs (not in his kitchen, with a reference book or online video). The Internet is a haven for evil-doers.

The seemingly neutral words which were chosen are in fact projecting a specific representation on the Internet. This unconscious dimension is what makes the metaphor so powerful… and dangerous.

From rhetoric to cognitive linguistics

Persuading an audience through the power of words isn’t a new idea – rhetoric wasn’t born yesterday. What is new is the discovery how metaphors are processed in the brain. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, is the leading researcher in this domain.

As Lakoff explains, a person “makes sense” of his environment by forming and developing more elaborate metaphors from the primary metaphors that are formed during infancy. For example, when a baby cries its father will take the child into his arms, and this calms the baby. This is a simultaneous sensory experience consisting of two things: the emotional comfort and the warmth of a father’s arms. As Hebb’s law clearly states “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

It’s in this way that the feelings of warmth and emotional comfort become neurologically linked. This connection translates into the figurative expressions that we use everyday, sometimes without even realizing it. For example, we often say someone received a warm welcome.

As an individual develops over time, the primary metaphors combine and create more complex metaphors. The first prototypical cognitive frames give rise to particular scenarios, each with their given heros and villains. Taken on a whole, this summarizes how we think.

Here’s an example of a framed debate on the Internet and creation that really hits home:

While Félix Tréguer from La Quadrature du Net was trying to finish his defense on sharing digital cultural works, Thierry Solère (the parliamentarian responsible for issues regarding the Internet for the UMP) interrupted him: “To take a work created by someone who makes their living through creation, without paying anything, is to kill the creator.”

Solère’s rebuttal vehemently opposes the Internet as place for sharing, and imposes a figurative scenario where the bad guy is recognized as an assassin. The victim is cunningly well-selected. It isn’t an entire industry (books, music, or films) but rather the creator who is targeted.

Such figurative scenarios and their respective frames have a huge impact on how we make sense of the world around us, and dictate the decisions we make on a daily basis.

Imagine that you are critically ill and that have to choose whether to have an operation or not. (…) There are two doctors who have the expertise to perform the operation. Doctor A tells you that you have a 10% chance of dying during the operation. Doctor B tells you that you have a 90% chance of surviving the operation. Doctor A frames the decision in terms of death. Doctor B frames the decision in terms of survival. The percentages are literally identical. (…) Studies show that the majority of interviewed “patients” would rather choose Doctor B because the operation was presented in the cognitive frame of survival instead of death. (Lakoff G., The Political Mind, 2008, p. 224)

This research is what won Daniel Kahneman, a cognitive psychologist, the Noble Prize in economy in 2002. His research shows evidence that human reasoning is far from the “rational actor” model which previously predominated economic thought.

Exit Homo Economicus

Human thought was once considered to be guided by reflection – a slow, sequential process governed by concrete rules and demanding a conscious effort. According to Kahneman, human thought isn’t governed by reflection but rather by reflex. It’s a rapid cognitive process, unconscious (98% of our thoughts are unconscious), and associative.

While rhetoric seems obsolete (when was the last time someone told you they majored in rhetoric?), Neurology and modern cognitive sciences are suddenly demonstrating the impact language has on our lives. The way a politician chooses to broach a subject, and the framework selected to talk about it have a direct influence on the way people think about the subject. Judith E. Schlanger elegantly highlights this in The Metaphors of the Organism:

A manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking.

Metaphors are everywhere, especially when we’re talking about the Internet. The Internet is a complex technological concept and a tool used by novices for the most part. Its vocabulary has to adapt itself to these constraints simultaneously, drawing on the familiar to explain the new.

The most common metaphors used to describe the Internet indicate it is a place or a definite space: e-mail address, a site that we visit, to host a blog, cybernaut, cyberspace, etc. Kevin Kelley’s Internet Mapping Project (cofounder of Wired) uses these same images to lengthily describe the Internet as a place. The “Internet Space” could be on land or sea: surfer, navigate, pirates, flux, anchor, filter, phishing, Netscape Navigator, eBay…

Denis Jamet from the Language Department at the University of Lyon 3 also notes “the nearly (figurative) use of the preposition “on” to talk about the Internet: go on the Internet, surf on the Internet, be on MSN, put it on your blog, etc. It’s a preposition that according to Johansson [2006:86] “Corresponds to the absence of the Internet’s definite limits and to the vague borders of the fictional place.” In other words, it “once again show its immensity.”

The nautical metaphors stress certain precise aspects about the Internet: an immense space, in perpetual motion (information flux), where man is only a passing visitor. A savage place — and therefore dangerous (pirates, phishing). The idea of dangers also gives rise to earthly terms: Trojan horse, worms, viruses…

The fact that the Internet is seen as a place, and not as a tool, has real consequences:

The way in which we select our metaphors (…) has important legal and political ramifications. Analogies are the metaphors most often used when making legal and political decisions when talking about technological change. (Lokman Tsui, An Inadequate Metaphor: The Great Firewall and Chinese Internet Censorship)

The European Union has recently provided us with an example of this with its reflections on the creation of a “Great Firewall” around its borders.

The Internet is also drenched in the vocabulary for leisurely activities: surfing, social networks, friends… This is not the case when we think about computers and their “work” vocabulary: desktop, files, garbage bin, etc. This choice in lexicon (labeling the Internet as “fun,” and the computer as “work”), affects how the Internet is used in the education system. Schools are happy to use computers, but are much more wary of the Internet’s pedagogical benefits. Certain “official” sites are welcome in class, but the social web or Web 2.0 continues to arouse suspicion.

An “official” site (.gov) whose content is fixed is perceived in a similar category as books, and thus is seen as secure. Web 2.0 sites, however, are interpreted as insecure. If people can comment, add content, then the site is no longer a space where the users pass through nor just a document that users consult. It becomes a place where users live and act (which Annette Markham calls “a way of being.”)

The question of integrating new technologies and education isn’t being posed in terms of integrating the web with the students, but in terms of integrating the students with the web. This change in order makes a significant difference, and it requires creating even more elaborate metaphors.

When we talk about the Internet and communication technologies, the digressive choices in language that we make have real, tangible consequences on the form and the perception of these technologies. Even more importantly, as our discursive frames being omnipresent in our daily language, any alternatives are subsequently forgotten. At this stage in the development of Internet technologies, it’s vital to consider which capacities and possibilities are valued in using figurative constructions. But also, which capacities and possibilities that these constructions erase. (Annette Markham, Metaphors Reflecting and Shaping the Reality of the Internet: Tool, Place, Way of Being)