Doc Seals and David Weinberger have an article, titled “What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else,” that discusses what they call Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is the tendency for some people or organizations to see a new thing as being “just like” some old thing, even when the comparison is tenuous or misses the essential nature of what is being compared.
For example, cinema was initially seen as radio with pictures, or as stage plays but projected on a big screen. TV suffered a similar fate (though there was a rare exception), and it was no surprise that when people started making Web sites the pages were all formulated on principle derived from print. (Hell, why do we call them “pages” anyway?)
There are too many who see the Web as being just another form of TV or some other form of one-way communication. More generally, bad analogies abound; anyone who speaks of the Net as being a highway, super information or not, just doesn’t understand.
Every medium goes through this: the internet has penetrated more markets and homes more quickly than radio or television, too fast to be understood for what it is. Like the story of the five blind men and the elephant, perhaps its all perception or how you use it: perhaps its a mistake to try and understand what it is when what we should do is try to see that everyone’s relationship to it may be, will be, different and unique.