Meta Farce

The purpose of this article is to introduce my views and theories regarding general orientational metaphors and their influence over our understanding of computers. Since the English language dominates computer discourse and most machine languages are written from an English perspective special attention is given to orientational metaphors derived from the English language. The reader is expected to have a basic understanding of computer organization. While more detailed knowledge of software artifacts and the methods associated with managing their complexity may also be useful.

My own journey and interest in computers and metaphors began around my time as an undergraduate. I was working at the campus bookstore of my university and dealing every day with customers and their broken personal computers. I was well versed in fixing computers since I had been breaking, fixing and breaking again my own computers as well as those of friends and family. But what was new to me was dealing with customers and their broken computers.

This article is exactly 2600 words in length. Ma Bell RIP.

In Part I we introduced the concept of direct communication and gave a definition for it based on the dictionary definition of the adjective direct. I then showed how this definition of direct communication implies the use of the conduit metaphor. I will now discuss some of the problems with using the conduit metaphor as a model for communication. And then go into how important shared context is for good communication and how the conduit model fails to take this into account.

I think it’s great if someone wants to tell me how direct they are or that they focus on being direct. Really I do. At the very least it shows that they genuinely want to focus on clarity of communication and are well intended. Unfortunately it also belies an assumption that a quality of directness can be quantified and measured, that directness itself is a quality that someone either has or does not have.