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Here an update of my musings on transcoding metaphors, in the form of an article which has been submitted to Configurations.
Comments are welcome!

Interfacing by icons and metaphors

In this article I explore the role of mediating metaphors in our daily use of software. More specifically, how we deal with the desktop interface and its common 'icons', such as the mailbox icon. It will be shown how digital iconicity tends to metaphorical condensation and reification, a material-semiotic process which not only represents but also depresents what is going on inside a computer on the level of code and machinic transferences. This instance of reifying 'icontology' obscures the indexical transferences set in action by software. The article will show how and why computer interfaces are different from other machine interfaces, and how its buttons and switches function as condensed metaphorical sign-tools, usually in the form of 'icons'. These sign-tools have to be analytically decomposed in order to see what they hide and how they perform their signifying and executing job. The mailbox icon will be subsequently considered as a Peircian sign, as a Heideggerian tool, and finally as a material metaphor, in order to open up the black box and disentangle the sign-tool-machine oscillation at work in our computing practices.

Complete text: Interfacing by icons and metaphors

An update of my musings on transcoding metaphors,  submitted to SPIEL.
Comments are welcome!

Transcoding metaphors after the mediatic turn

Hegel once wrote, rather regretful: ?The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk? (Hegel 1820). With this metaphor he indicated that philosophy understands phenomena only at the end of the day, when things have already passed. Wisdom always comes by hindsight, but at that moment the phenomenon at stake might be gone already. Hegel's winged words are still up to date. Thus, when philosophers and media scholars proclaim a mediatic or a medial turn, and start building conceptual frameworks, disciplines, and research programs around (New) Media Philosophy (Rodowick 2001, M?nker e.a. 2003, Sandbothe 2005), we could have a gut feeling that this media thing might be already behind us.
And indeed, right at the moment scholars start thinking about what media are, what they do, how they constitute what we conceive as reality and truth, and what this implies for ethics, politics, education and culture at large, media seem to be gone. Or at least they are on the move. Contemporary media seem to have lost their stable ontology as apparatus, they can no longer be located in particular carriers, devices, modalities or institutions. They seem to be ubiquitous, everywhere and nowhere. They have become floating signifiers, ready to embark on any instance of articulation or communication, ready to mediate anything at hand. And, as usual in philosophy, with the wisdom of hindsight, we realize retrospectively that after all no medium ? be it print, film, or television ? ever had a stable ontology.
What do we have then? A minimum definition would be: we have processes instead of ?things? ? mediations instead of media.

Complete text: Transcoding metaphors after the mediatic turn

Marianne van den Boomen, "Van gemeenschap via webnetwerk naar datawolk". In: Jan Steyaert and Jos de Haan (eds.) Jaarboek ICT en samenleving 2007: Gewoon digitaal p.129-148. Amsterdam: Boom, 2007.

Van gemeenschap via webnetwerk naar datawolk

Het is inmiddels een open deur om te zeggen dat het internet niet meer weg te denken is uit de samenleving. Gebruikers zijn allang niet meer de professionals en nerds van weleer maar gewone mensen. Grootouders mailen met hun kleinkinderen, scholieren vinden elkaar op MSN en Hyves, studenten bloggen hun opdrachten, en rond elke kwaal, hobby, leefstijl of interesse bestaan online communities. Het internet is gewoon geworden, mainstream, vanzelfsprekend vervlochten met het dagelijks leven (Herring 2004, Pew 2005).
In deze bijdrage wil ik nagaan hoe die sociale vervlechting de afgelopen decennia tot stand is gekomen. Ik onderscheid daartoe drie vormen van e-sociabiliteit, opgevat als specifieke configuraties van internettechnologie en sociale toe-eigening. Die drie soorten configuraties ? kortweg: virtuele gemeenschappen, instant webnetwerken en gedistribueerde datawolken ? vormen min of meer opeenvolgende generaties, maar bestaan tegelijkertijd uit sedimentaties en getransformeerde voortzettingen van elkaar. Hoewel zo'n benadering noch historisch noch analytisch volledig is, valt zo een lijn te ontwaren van een toenemende online-offlinevervlechting parallel aan een afname van publieke communicatie in lokaliseerbare online ruimtes. Ik zal eindigen met de vraag of deze ontwikkelingen niet nopen tot het herijken van de concepten waarmee sociabiliteit van oudsher werd geanalyseerd.

Complete tekst:
Van gemeenschap via webnetwerk naar datawolk in: Jan Steyaert and Jos de Haan (eds.) Jaarboek ICT en samenleving 2007: Gewoon digitaal p.129-148. Amsterdam: Boom, 2007.