First - regarding upload and download - the use of these terms within this community is so self-evident as to be tautological. Upload and downlode make use of the spatial metaphors that here is down and there is up. Why there is up is up for debate - but thats the way it is. For more on metaphor - see Saffer's master's thesis and Lakoff/Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By."
More interesting is import/export. Before file formats, different OSes, and networked computers - import/export had a commonly understood meaning. Import was to bring goods into a country from somewhere outside. Export was to ship goods to a foreign country. There was no transfiguration of the goods in question. The East India company did not take nutmeg from Ceylon and change it into tea which was imported by the American colonies. Tea was tea - and simply moved location, and at the same time crossed a legal barrier and became American after a tax stamp was affixed to the goods. Again - essentially spatial. So why is it that in CS we choose to use import/export not to signify a change in location and jurisdiction - but simply a transfiguration and translation from one thing into another. Exporting a file does not move it, it simply changes it's encoding, after which you save it with a different name, and extension. So why use words whose meaning refers to space (import is moving to here, export is moving to there) - to mean translation? -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | CrowdSprout tel +1.617.281.1281 | fax +1.617.507.6016 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
