Metaphorical verbs

Through email with Vergil Iliescu, I think I’ve realized what my problem is with the never-ending blogthread on new metaphors for the Web — which I, of course, am now extending yet again. While I like the direction the blogthread has been going, focusing on the associative, hyperlinked nature of the Web and comparing it to the imagination, maybe the problem is that we’ve been thinking about nouns instead of verbs and adjectives. If the Web is like a shared imagination, then what verbs follow? After all, the spatial metaphor is baked right into the everyday language we use for talking about our experience of the Web. A new metaphor would have to replace the quotidian “going to” and “leaving” language the spatial metaphor provides.

Categories: Uncategorized dw