Gordon, Metaphors in technology go way back. One very important one is William Harvey describing the heart as a pump. This was not only the first sense of what the heart was actually doing, but could only be done through metaphor (ok, its backwards, tech metaphor for non-tech) . Then an interesting one is that the radio project was almost scrapped by Marconi because it was a lousy wireless telegraph (no one to one communication). Then someone came up with the broadcast metaphor (from agriculture). In terms of computer tech, how about the information superhighway. This leads to more effort being done to make modems (the cars) faster and the lines (roads) smoother and more efficient. This is at the expense (to some degree) of other possibilities such as information packaging and network structure. I really don't think you can really do justice to the metaphor stuff by focussing on describing various metaphors and how they manifest, though. There is a huge literature on metaphor theory and cognition. If you want a slice of it, I can give you a pretty good biblio, drop me a line off-group and I'll send you one. I am an anthropologist so the focus is there, but there is a lot of stuff that should be useful to you (ie where do specific metaphors come from, and why, what is going on in the brain, how it affects how we perceive stuff post-metaphor, etc). Also, you may be interested in http://creet.open.ac.uk/projects/metaphor-analysis/index.cfm (metaphor analysis website), and Researching and Applying Metaphor International Association (RaAM) at http://raam.org.uk/Home.html Best, Cameron