More usage: "Open" or "Access" web addresses

[Ned Bedinger]

Leonard C. Porrello wrote:
> Some argue that all language is metaphor. 
In fact, it's not dificult to argue that "click" itself is metaphorical.
One doesn't click. The "mouse" clicks. To be strictly literal,
you'd have to say, "apply pressure to the left-most button on the top
of the mouse until you hear a 'click', then release the button."
Of course, this begs the question, "does a tree falling in a forest
make a noise if there is no one to hear it?" In other words, "does
the mouse really 'click', or is the 'click' merely just a human mental 
construct?"

Fortunately, what does matter to language is the mental construct. 
Greet it not as a tyrant, but as a liberator. It is our experience. That 
is what will be reflected in the language. So, what is our experience?

My experience is that when I'm working on the computer, my mind lets the 
objections, about what is real, fade to background,  My mind wants to 
suspend disbelief, and just assimilate the computer as an extension of 
itself.

The image I like of this relationship between mind and computer is from 
a cable documentary on the Giant Pacific Octopus--in the show, a captive 
octopus is given a jar with a screw-on lid. Inside the lidded jar is a 
frantic crab, the octopus's favorite food. After looking the jar over 
briefly, the octopus envelops the jar, unscrews the lid, and gets the crab.

Like the octopus, our eyes are key to our ingenuity and experience. It 
couldn't be any other way, considering that the eyes an brain have a lot 
in common, far more than the other senses. In the embryo, our eyes are 
extruded from the same tissue the brain forms from.  Eyes are literally 
the brain's window on the world. Of all the senses, the eyes alone have 
direct, unfiltered, high bandwidth input to the brain. So, our 
experience, both direct and, as a result, liguistic, is bound to reflect 
the visual experience of a mind that has suspended disbelief and 
assimilated the computer, with the cursor as its avatar.

I don't believe that the strict literal version, of how the mouse gets 
clicked, is going to rise to the top of experience. The mouse, being 
just a means for the mind to exert its will on its real focus of 
attention (the cursor), will fade to the edge of consciousness, where I 
can click click away without foregrounding the mental process much. In 
the language, click will be all about the cursor, little at all about 
the mouse.

Regards,

Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com