Metaphors at War in Cyberspace

Selil on the evolving cyber-literature:

"Whether we are part of the military, intelligence, corporate, counter culture, or civilian communities we bring a certain set of expectations and thinking to the idea of cyber warfare. Unfortunately those biases often have the leaders talking past each other ....The metaphors of cyber warfare are partially to blame. In trying to force cyber warfare into a metaphor it is denigrated and castigated as much as it is heralded with miraculous powers. The better case is that metaphors and analogies are rife with systemic bias of the community positing the miraculous conceptual allegory."

To a large extent this is also a process of people trying to superimpose elements of experience or reference from their experience (or institutional memory) into the cyber-realm. Hence, for example, an Air Force officer would write an article titled "carpet-bombing in cyberspace." It underscores the fact that cyber warfare (a very nebulous term in and of itself) is an emerging medium of conflict.

Perhaps some decades into the future cyber-metaphors will trickle back the other way around.

Comments

[Joseph Fouche]

The leak of metaphors from cyber back into the Desert of the Real is well underway. Many are the times I hear terms like central processing unit, software, hardware, etc. used outside of the contexts that an engineer would use. Discussions of the human mind are especially rife with references to computing architecture even though the differences can be vast. If I hear one more person proclaim information wants to be free, I'm going to choke.

[A.E.]

For lack of a better word, lulz

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Joseph forgot to mention in his list: "Sysadmin".

I wonder if "network" should also be considered. The ideas behind it were being developed long before that word was used to describe the idea, however.

[A.E.]

Some of these metaphors work, others don't. I hate, for example, the phrase "Information Wants to be Free"

[YT]

"Information Wants to be Free."

Since when was it ever?

[A.E.]

Good question.