1. Life Pro tip: Aim at what you hit.

2. A metaphor that may come in handy someday: As undignified as a child climbing a slide.

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That title is supposed to be a very bad play on “Manifest Destiny,” the 19th century American assumption that of course European-Americans will master the entire stretch of the country, transforming it according to their cultural norms. What, we’d stop in Sheboygan? Pshaw!

We have the same narrative now with the Net. Of course the Net will continue until every region is hooked up. Of course it will go beyond humans until every conceivable device is chattering over the Net. Of course! What, we’d stop with the affluent or with the human? Pshaw!

I’m not say that this narrative is wrong, just as Manifest Destiny triumphed. I’m just pointing out that it’s a narrative, and not actually a destiny.

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Or maybe it’s a dictionary. Or an encyclopedia. In any case, The Mind is a Metaphor you can look up metaphors by keyword and facet the results by date, genre, nationality, gender, etc. (Note that these are facets of the speaker, not of the metaphor.)

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Amboseli baboons engage in what’s called “snake mobbing”: Rather than fleeing from a predatory snake, they approach it and sound the alarm or even, at times, attack it. (“The Information Continuum,” Barbara J. King, p.43)

Surely this must be a metaphor for something.

[Tags: baboons snakes metaphors ]

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