The Internet is Not a Highway!

(Or, why anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something...)

By Chris Tweney

• Introduction
• Metaphor and duplicity: The double-edged sword
• Virtual spaces, mental nets
• The sword bounces back
• A call to arms: Resist the levelling of the Internet!

The metaphor of computer network as highway is in most respects fundamentally flawed. Its mental resonance guides and determines a host of popular misconceptions about the Internet. To see why this is so, one must examine the inner workings of this metaphor, pull apart the structure by which "superhighway" gains so much force in the media.

Metaphor and duplicity: The double-edged sword

What, then, occurs when we metaphorize the Internet as a highway? First, the physical and logical structure of a network gets mapped (or translated) onto the physical structure of a road; by this mapping, the idea of space is introduced to the network. Second, the linear nature of a highway imposes itself on the weblike "shape" of the Internet. Highways are lines; cars can enter and exit only at certain points along the line. These lines along which we travel in cars are determined in a Cartesian space, that is, one that can be mapped onto a two-dimensional (or three-dimensional if necessary) coordinate plane governed by standard Euclidean geometry.

Virtual spaces, mental nets

A quick answer to the question of why the Cartesian highway metaphor is so compelling is that most people have very little understanding of the different types of space described by physics. More importantly, all of our experience occurs on a classical, Cartesian level; quantum phenomena are as far removed from us as chimerae and dragons. One could then say that people think of the Internet as a highway because it attaches a new idea (the incredible complexity of a global computer network) to a familiar idea (the relatively manageable simplicity of an interstate).

If you consider matters for a while, however, an entirely different idea of space emerges, one which is much more adequate for describing the Internet than Euclidean space. The experience of mental phenomena -- thoughts, feelings, language -- is very often voiced in spatial terms ("it's on the tip of my tongue," "this thought is close to that other one," and so on). This is, of course, another metaphor: the thoughts that occur in our minds are symbolically connected to the physical spaces in which we live, play, work, eat, sleep, and so forth. By this metaphorical connection, we have a handle that assists in the articulation of our thought processes. This handle is not always fully adequate to the task, to be sure, since thoughts are often more slippery and fleeting than the spaces around us. However, it does express the kernel of an idea which is important to this discussion: the mental life can also be a type of space.

The experience of exploring the Internet is quite similar to the spatial metaphor as applied to thoughts. When you negotiate the World-Wide Web, for example, the hyperlinks make it possible to "move" between different pages, which are (usually) thematically associated in some way. The browser bounces on to a new page, but the ideas and images from the previous page are still fresh in your mind. You have traversed a mental association, one which can be tracked (through history menus and the like), although not always repeated.

It is true that surfing the Web often feels very much like traveling. In making a series of jumps from the site at NCSA to CERN to Hotwired, a powerful sense of change in environment arises, although you have not left your chair. The fact that no physical movement is involved in "traveling" the Web is the basis for the treatment of computer networks as virtual spaces. We can conceive of a distributed hypertext system, like the WWW, as a virtual space because we make the metaphorical connection between a digital data structure and physical space.

The metaphor of virtual space, like other metaphors, illuminates while informing and influencing the treatment of both digital and physical spaces. When we immerse ourselves in the Web for an extended period, the ordinary physical world takes on digital aspects. Other types of electronic environments have similar effects -- a long MOO session can make a player think of objects in the everyday world as having the properties of virtual MOO objects (inheritance, transportability, programmable verbs, and so on). This influence of digital spaces on physical space has often been noted, and does indeed constitute a transformation in our conception of the world.

The sword bounces back

There is, of course, another way to drive a highway: touring for the scenery. You can drive along a road, not to go anywhere in particular, but merely to see what is to be seen. Touring in this way is a closer match to what most people are actually doing on the WWW: mucking about having fun. Used in this way, the Web is less a transparent tool for a particular purpose than it is an environment into which people choose to enter for travel, entertainment, and so forth.

So which is it? Is the WWW a tool for education, business, and personal growth (instrumental view), or is it an new environment for fun and diversion? The answer, of course, must be: both. Different people will use networks in various ways; even one person may use the WWW both as tool and diversion. In the final analysis, it does not seem that the distinction between instrumental and "touring" use of the Web will help with the critique of the Internet-as-highway metaphor. I introduced the idea of two modes to illustrate the difficulties that are connected with this particularly pervasive metaphor.

A call to arms: Resist the levelling of the Internet!

Read Mark Weiser's paper, The Computer for the Twenty-First Century, for an interesting point of view regarding computers as "transparent tools".