George Lakoff is known for saying that “metaphors can kill” and he’s not wrong. But in that, metaphors are no different from any other language. The simple amoral imperative “Kill!” will do the job just as nicely. Nor are metaphors any better or worse at obfuscating than any other type of language. But they are very good at their primary purpose which is making complex connections between domains.
Metaphors can create very powerful connections where none existed before. And we are just as often seduced by that power as inspired to new heights of creativity. We don’t really have a choice. Metaphoric thinking is in our DNA (itself a metaphor). But just like with DNA, context is important, and sometimes metaphors work for us and sometimes they work against us. The more powerful they are, the more cautious we need to be. When faced with powerful metaphors we should always look for alternatives and we should also explore the limits of the metaphors and the connections they make. We need to keep in mind that nothing IS anything else but everything is LIKE something else.
I was reminded of this recently when listening to an LSE lecture by the journalist Andrew Blum who was promoting his book “Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet”. The lecture was reasonably interesting although he tried to make the subject seem more important than it perhaps was through judicious reliance of the imagery of covertness.
But I was particularly struck by the last example where he compared Facebook’s and Google’s data centers in Colorado. Facebook’s center was open and architecturally modern, being part of the local community. Facebook also shared the designs of the center with the global community and was happy to show Blum around. Google’s center was closed, ugly and opaque. Google viewed its design as part of their competitive advantage and most importantly didn’t let Blum past the parking lot.
From this Blum drew far reaching conclusions which he amplified by implying them. If architecture is an indication of intent, he implied, then we should question what Google’s ugly hidden intent is as opposed to Facebook’s shining open intent. When answering a question he later gave prosecutors in New England and in Germany as compounding evidence of people who are also frustrated with Google’s secrecy. Only reluctantly admitting that Google invited him to speak at their Authors Speak program.
Now, Blum may have a point regarding the secrecy surrounding that data center by Google, there’s probably no great competitive advantage in its design and no abiding security reason in not showing its insides to a journalist. But using this comparison to imply anything about the nature of Facebook or Google is just an example of typical journalist dishonesty. Blum is not lying to us. He is lying to himself. I’m sure he convinced himself that since he was so clever to come up with such a beautiful analogy, it must be true.
The problem is that pretty much anything can be seen through multiple analogies. And any one of those analogies can be stopped at any point or be stretched out far and wide. A good metaphor hacker will always seek out an alternative analogy and explore the limits of the domain mapping of the dominant one. In this case, not much work is needed to uncover what a pompous idiot Blum is being.
First, does this facilities reflect attitudes extend to what we know about the two companies in other spheres. And here the answer is NO. Google tells let’s you liberate your data, Facebook does not. Google lets you opt out of many more things that Facebook. Google sponsors many open source projects, Facebook is more closed source (even though they do contribute heavily to some key projects). When Facebook acquires a company, they often just shut it down leaving customers high and dry, Google closes projects too, but they have repeatedly released source code of these projects to the community. Now, is Google the perfect open company? Hardly. But Facebook with its interest in keeping people in its silo is can never be given a shinign beacon of openness. It might be at best a draw (if we can even make a comparison) but I’d certainly give Google far more credit in the openness department. But the analogy simply fails when exposed to current knowledge. I can only assume that Blum was so happy to have come up with it that he wilfully ignored the evidence.
But can we come up with other analogies? Yes. How about the fact that the worst dictatorships in the world have come up with grand idealistic architectural designs in history. Designs and structures that spoke of freedom, beautiful futures and love of the people for their leaders. Given that we know all that, why would we ever trust a design to indicate anything about the body that commissioned it? Again, I can only assume that Blum was seduced by his own cleverness.
Any honest exploration of this metaphor would lead us to abandoning it. It was not wrong to raise it, in the world of cognition, anything is fair. But having looked at both the limits of the metaphor and alternative domain mappings, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not doing us any good. It supports a biased political agenda.
The moral of the story is don’t trust one-metaphor journalists (and most journalists are one-metaphor drones). They might have some of the facts right but they’re almost certainly leaving out large amounts of relevant information in pursuit of their own figurative hedonism.
Disclaimer: I have to admit, I’m rather a fan of Google’s approach to many things and a user of many of their services. However, I have also been critical of Google on many occasions and have come to be wary of many of their practices. I don’t mind Facebook the company, but I hate that it is becoming the new AOL. Nevertheless, I use many of Facebook’s services. So there.