#edcmooc Salvation or destruction: metaphors of the internet by R. Johnston.

I have just read Jonston´s work on metaphors of the internet. I studied some of the authors mentioned in the text, specially Lakoff and Johnson, as I studied linguistics at university, but it was focused on language and not on technology. 

I think people use metaphors to understand the internet the same way we use metaphors to understand reality. As Johnston says, we created a great range of metaphors to refer to the internet as it is part or our lives and as a result, part of our reality.

So it is logical to ascribe time and space features to our concept of the internet as it is the way we conceive reality. And I also think we personalize the internet because, even if it is a tool we use everyday for different purposes, it seems that it is an independent being.

Depending on our view of the internet, we will use possitive or negative purposes, what it takes us again to the dichotomy discussed in the first week: we will consider the internet possitive or negative depending on our view if we see it as a utopian or dystopian element. Furthermore, we can also see the internet for different purposes within the utopian or dystopian point of view so we can subdivide these metaphors in many others such as demading, revolutionary, oppressing...

All these metaphors,as I pointed out above, respond to the main considerations expressed in the text: we can see the internet as salvation, which is the possitive and utopian point of view, or as destruction, which is the negative and dystopian point of view.

We express our thoughts and ideas on the internet the same way we express ourselves in any other area of our lives or reality and to understand such abstract idea of the internet, we use metaphors, but we will use ones or others depending on how we conceive it.