How metaphors shape the digital society
Cloud, Big Data, Piracy, Virus are common terms in the debates about digital technologies. At the same time they are methaphors that originate from other fields than technology. What normative or political baggage do they therefore carry? How does this vocabulary shape the emerging digital society? In the series of articles on the Politics of Metaphors different authors analyse the assumptions and meanings of metaphors in the digital era.
Articles in this Dossier
Organic search: How metaphors help cultivate the web
Tomatoes, apples and bread can be ‘organic.’ But search results? Anna Jobin and Malte Ziewitz wonder about…
The Privatised Public Sphere
The public sphere metaphor was always contested and this continues in the digital realm. While “old” debates…
Backdoor: How a metaphor turns into a weapon
Governments want special access to encrypted data while IT specialists and privacy advocates oppose these demands. What…
Is Open Science a tautology?
In our blog series on metaphors of the digital society, we uncover the vocabularies that are thrown around…
The platform as pizza: towards a taxonomy of platforms
The ‘platform’ metaphor is at once inevitable and misleading. What’s more, we no longer regard it a…
The Platform Metaphor, Revisited
The most successful internet businesses are based on the idea of offering a platform. Author Tarleton Gillespie…
Sharing – from ploughshares to file sharing and beyond
The metaphor of sharing is central to the workings of social media and indeed to computer-mediated communication…
Who benefits from the so-called New Media Revolution?
The new media revolution is a common metaphor that is often used to describe the contemporary communications…
AI – A Metaphor or the seed of personality of machines in a digitised society?
Is artificial intelligence a metaphor, or can machines be intelligent in the same way human beings are?…
Imagining the Digital Society – Metaphors from the Past and Present
The current rapid social and technological change is giving rise to enormous uncertainties – and a great…