You’ve come to an example of perhaps one of the main aspects of the future of communication. Metaphors of useful for a lot of reasons, but one of these reasons is to decrease burden on cognitive resources by drawing an isomorphism with something already understood (to cut out the time and energy necessary to explain the structure from scratch), or by introducing an isomorphism with something that’s easier to remember because of how the human mind works (such as your example, where you point out that things involving human meaning and intention are easier to remember).
People have been using metaphors for these and other reasons for a very long time, but in most cases people have been stuck with picking out of the already-existing landscape of things to draw isomorphisms from. This is difficult because these other things were not introduced into the thought landscape among the population for the purpose of being made into metaphors—they just happen to be there. But what you’re talking about is removing this limitation, and essentially creating a new structure, for the purpose of then drawing a metaphor with it. This means creating a metaphor by design, rather than having to pick one from the wild.
Take it a step further, and move outside the paradigm of being constrained to just words for explaining things—make a bit more technological—and you realize one of the most promising avenues in the future will be to create enjoyable video games with worlds of their own, and rules of their own, for the purpose of later drawing metaphors from this man-made landscape. The problem of having to draw only from already-existing things for metaphors is gone. You can design worlds for the purpose of making metaphors out of pieces of them later on.
Few things I’ve stumbled onto seem to have the same potential as this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is literally at the center of the future of communication. Once video games are easier to make, and the average ambitious individual can work on their own video game, just as any ambitious person can write a novel, this may end up one of the most effective forms of communication—building an enjoyable virtual world for people to play through, with the ending being a re-labeling of all the components, revealing their theory on something in an extremely clear, effective, efficient manner.
You’ve come to an example of perhaps one of the main aspects of the future of communication. Metaphors of useful for a lot of reasons, but one of these reasons is to decrease burden on cognitive resources by drawing an isomorphism with something already understood (to cut out the time and energy necessary to explain the structure from scratch), or by introducing an isomorphism with something that’s easier to remember because of how the human mind works (such as your example, where you point out that things involving human meaning and intention are easier to remember).
People have been using metaphors for these and other reasons for a very long time, but in most cases people have been stuck with picking out of the already-existing landscape of things to draw isomorphisms from. This is difficult because these other things were not introduced into the thought landscape among the population for the purpose of being made into metaphors—they just happen to be there. But what you’re talking about is removing this limitation, and essentially creating a new structure, for the purpose of then drawing a metaphor with it. This means creating a metaphor by design, rather than having to pick one from the wild.
Take it a step further, and move outside the paradigm of being constrained to just words for explaining things—make a bit more technological—and you realize one of the most promising avenues in the future will be to create enjoyable video games with worlds of their own, and rules of their own, for the purpose of later drawing metaphors from this man-made landscape. The problem of having to draw only from already-existing things for metaphors is gone. You can design worlds for the purpose of making metaphors out of pieces of them later on.
Few things I’ve stumbled onto seem to have the same potential as this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is literally at the center of the future of communication. Once video games are easier to make, and the average ambitious individual can work on their own video game, just as any ambitious person can write a novel, this may end up one of the most effective forms of communication—building an enjoyable virtual world for people to play through, with the ending being a re-labeling of all the components, revealing their theory on something in an extremely clear, effective, efficient manner.