[Air-L] Metaphors in Technology

[Gordon Joly]

At 09:37 +0100 9/6/08, Cameron Adams wrote:
>Gordon,
>
>Metaphors in technology go way back.  One very important one is 
>William Harvey describing the heart as a pump.  This was not only 
>the first sense of what the heart was actually doing, but could only 
>be done through metaphor (ok, its backwards, tech metaphor for 
>non-tech) .  Then an interesting one is that the radio project was 
>almost scrapped by Marconi because it was a lousy wireless telegraph 
>(no one to one communication).  Then someone came up with the 
>broadcast metaphor (from agriculture).  In terms of computer tech, 
>how about the information superhighway.  This leads to more effort 
>being done to make modems (the cars) faster and the lines (roads) 
>smoother and more efficient.  This is at the expense (to some 
>degree) of other possibilities such as information packaging and 
>network structure.


Not directly connected to metaphor perhaps, but some of the above 
ideas are discussed in Brian Winston's book.

"Media, Technology and Society: A History - From the Printing Press 
to the Superhighway" Brian Winston, Routledge (1998). ISBN 041514230X

Also, from the original posting:-

>>  PowerPoint using "slides"

This suggested to me that a visit "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" 
by Edward Tufte would be worthwhile.

Regards,

Gordo

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