Show me on the map where they hacked you: cyberwar and the geospatial Internet doctrine.

AuthorSauter, Molly
PositionFrederick K. Cox International Law Center Symposium: International Regulation of Emerging Military Technologies

Using metaphor theory as presented by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, this paper presents four conceptual metaphors found in international internet policy documents. This paper argues that these four metaphors encourage the development of a fractured infrastructure, national internets, the importation of international conflicts from the physical world into the online space, and the unquestioned replication of offline structures of power in the online space. The paper further argues that these metaphors serve to preempt regulatory and infrastructural systems based around the preservation of individual rights and freedoms in the online space in favor of systems that are oriented to preserving nation-state based stability and security

Contents I. Introduction II. What are Conceptual Metaphors and How Are They Used in Policy III. Documents Analyzed for the Article IV. The Metaphors A. The Internet is Transit/Carrier Infrastructure B. Data/Code is an Object C. Computers are Transparent Proxies D. The Internet has Real-World Geograph V. The Implications of these Metaphors in Policy and Infrastructure VI. Conclusion I. Introduction

There are many metaphors commonly used to describe the Internet: the "information super highway," a "series of tubes," "the cloud," the "global village," an "agora," or even just the "space" of "cyberspace." These metaphors provide the hook on which society can hang its understanding, since directly confronting the technical reality of the internet would result in overwhelmed confusion for even the most savvy of techies.

Each of the metaphors above contains within it a web of expectations, mental affordances, and assumptions about the nature, function, and purpose of the internet. Society would expect different things from the information super highway than it would from the global village or the cloud. This paper posits that, while it would be impossible to arrive at the high level of understanding of the online space needed to effectively construct international communications policy without the use of conceptual metaphors, these metaphors can also have a deep impact on the development of communications policy and, in turn, on the development of the technological systems these policies seek to regulate.

Using metaphor theory as presented by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, (2) this paper presents four conceptual metaphors found in four international internet policy documents: The internet is a transit/carrier system, data/code is an object, computers are human proxies, and the internet has real world geography. This paper argues that these four metaphors encourage the development of a fractured infrastructure, national internets, the importation of international conflicts from the physical world to the online space, and the unquestioned replication of offline structures of power in the online space. Furthermore, this article argues that these metaphors preempt regulatory and infrastructural systems based around the preservation of individual rights and freedoms, in favor of systems that are oriented to preserving nation-state based stability and security.

  1. What are Conceptual Metaphors and How Are They Used in Policy

    Lakoff and Johnson present in Metaphors We Live By their view of metaphors as creating and defining the basic concepts and structures by which people conduct their lives. "Our ordinary conceptual system," they write, "in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." (3) Using examples, such as "an argument is a war," "time is money," and "communication is sending," Lakoff and Johnson argue that language, interpersonal communication practices, and how society thinks and acts are deeply tied to prevailing metaphorical structures, which delineate how concepts may be considered. (4)

    Metaphors in Lakoff and Johnson's analysis operate systematically, linking the thing which is being explained (the "target domain") to a different, theoretically understood object or concept (the "source domain"), by which linkage to the thing being explained is better grasped. For example, in the metaphor "an argument is war", the target domain of "an argument" is understood through the conceptual metaphor of "war." (5) This, in turn, leads to a whole family of "metaphorical expressions," which exist under the umbrella of, and consistent with, the conceptual "war" metaphor: "He attacked my argument," "[s]he defended her point," "[h]er position is unassailable." (6) The conceptual metaphor delineates the operating space for the metaphorical expressions. What are actually in play are the metaphorical expressions. The conceptual metaphor is present at a higher level of abstraction from the everyday, and it is often unquestioned. The conceptual metaphor is incorporated into a conception of the way things are or should be. As a result, this can foreclose other interpretive frames for the concepts and actions at play. (7)

    Though conceptual metaphors and metaphoric expressions are constantly present in people's interactions with the world, each other, and within ourselves, the purposeful use of the metaphor is especially apparent when attempting to parse out difficult, complex, or esoteric concepts. As complex technological issues move outside the strict purview of the technocratic elite, the discourse of computing and networked technology is becoming increasing bound by conceptual metaphors. (8) In personal computing, these are often metaphors of the home and body: A hacker broke into my computer.; I saved that to my library, My computer has a virus. The graphical user interface (GUI), through which the vast majority of people interact with computers and networked systems, is constructed as a visual metaphor of an office, with a desktop, files residing in folders, and a trashcan that must be periodically emptied. This constant use of conceptual metaphor systems to render technological systems legible to people, as well as to political and legal structures, has extended to the realm of policy.

    The use of conceptual metaphors in the construction and implementation of internet policy is extremely attractive, given the black-boxed, (9) complex nature of technological systems up to this point. Many people have no way of speaking about network communications technologies at the high level needed for policy development without the use of metaphors. These metaphor not only help people conceive of an understanding of these technologies, but they also lay a path for how society expects them to develop. By providing a shared intellectual thread with which society may construct its experiences of even the most confusing and obscure aspects of the world, metaphors allow these individual experiences to become more universal, creating shared vocabularies and frames of experiences. Kristen Osega argues that developing this shared intellectual thread creates "discourse communities," or groups of people who share the same language, assumptions, knowledge bases, and patterns of thinking about certain issues and topics. (10) The existence of these discourse communities, essentially defined by their ability to effectively speak to each other, makes effective discussion and consensus possible, while at the same time these groups are hampered, by their very nature, from ever moving beyond the conceptual metaphors that tie them together. Discourse communities, while necessary for effective communication and consensus, enable and promote homogenized thinking and the domination of particular conceptual metaphors over others. (11)

    The metaphors that dominate these discourse communities and public life, however, may not inherently better than any other conceptual metaphors that could replace them. Lakoff and Johnson offer the "an argument is a dance" conceptual metaphor as a potential alternative to "an argument is a war." Would arguments be conducted differently in the West, they ask, if such arguments operated under the cooperative metaphor of "dance" rather than the oppositional and antagonistic metaphor of "war"? (12)

    When considering the...

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