New Metaphors for Cyberspace: Our Cloud Home?
Does the way we picture the Internet impact the way we engage online?
Whither “Cyberspace”?
Mike Nelson, an international expert on emerging technologies, offered a challenge during a recent People-Centered Internet (PCI) forum: What is the best metaphor for the Internet today? He noted that for decades we’ve talked about “cyberspace,” which originated as a science fiction term for a “widespread consensual hallucination.” That may not be the best way to think about the place where most of us are spending vast amounts of time these days.
Nelson, director of technology and international affairs at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, advises political and corporate leaders on the implications, dangers, and benefits of new technologies. But he’s equally concerned about how individual people engage online — especially at a time when more and more communication is happening in, er, cyberspace.
Nelson asked: Would we all become more comfortable in here if we had a grounding picture in our minds of this vast, cloudy, powerful technology that connects us in ways that are becoming increasingly essential but still feel awkward for many?
Here are a few metaphors (some also brands and slogans) that resonate with Nelson: Society 5.0 (Japan), Internet of Everything (Cisco), Big Data (O’Reilly Media), Cloud of Things.
He also came up with a few more of his own, some a bit tongue in cheek, that each has a cool acronym: Secure Cloud of Things (SCOT), Cloud of Shoddy Things (COST), Cloud of Very Expensive Things (COVET), Cloud of All Things (COAT).
But seriously, he asked, what is the new metaphor for today?
Nelson noted that different organizations over the years have created definitions of the Internet that reflect their cultures: UNESCO defines the Internet as people, the Department of Defense does not use the word people in its definitions, he said.
How did the original inventors of the Internet “see” it? PCI cofounder, Vint Cerf, one of the “Fathers of the Internet” did envision a cloud! He and his colleagues saw the information transmission as postcards. I’ll let Vint Cerf tell it in his own words:
“I think we visualized an arbitrarily large number of ‘packet switched’ networks attached to which were millions of computers. Our ‘protocols’ allowed these computers to communicate with any other computer on any of the connected networks of the Internet. This was an end-to-end system of what you might call ‘electronic postcards’ carrying arbitrary ‘payloads.’ The sending and receiving computers could interpret the contents of these postcards as a way of implementing applications requirement computer-to-computer communication. We drew networks as if they were clouds and we imagined ‘gateways’ connecting the clouds to each other with computers populating each cloud (network).”
It worked! Thank you, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. Today, how would we live without the Internet?!
There are complexities to be sure, as Nelson noted. The lenses into the are different depending on how people use it: for commerce, for content, for warfare, for human relationships. Today Vint is an international voice for the highest humanitarian values, reflected in the name of the organization he cofounded, “People-Centered Internet.”
“Our Cloud Home?”
The conversation with Nelson inspired me to ponder what would be the perfect metaphor — an aspirational one — for the Internet today. I came up with a concept of“Our Cloud Home.”
Our Cloud Home would be a place that is secure, where each of us decides who comes in, and into which room in our homes. If they take something from our home (such as our data and/or money), they need to clearly ask first. We’d have a sort of neighborhood watch program, with a system of quickly letting one another know when bad guys are lurking around. We’d connect with the vast amount of information on the planet in an orderly way, trusting the mail delivery person to filter out the junk and bring us just the right postcard. Yes, it’s an aspirational metaphor. I’d love your thoughts!
Eileen Clegg is a visual journalist who creates murals in real time to facilitate dialogue. She also develops informational history murals documenting patterns that shed light on future trends. Her primary focus today is humanizing online experiences.
