These metaphors make it hard for us to think of time as something to protect, care for, or cultivate. Time-to-yourself is often the exception rather than the rule. We usually don’t think twice about the design of [calendars] because they’re the invisible “water we swim in.” But their default settings/visualizations are shaping how we treat our time and others’—for the worse. Escaping the Gregorian grid They’re what designers call desire paths or free-will ways: “paths and tracks made over time by the wishes and feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning. When we question the assumptions that are built into our tools, we can think more clearly about how they’re influencing us and how we can make them better.

Imagine instead a culture that viewed arguments as dances rather than wars. Arguments would be beautiful exchanges of ideas rather than battles to be won. In the “argument as dance” metaphor, opponents become partners who are working toward the common goal of bettering each other. People “would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently.” If we stand at the intersection of different ideas, then the ideas must be roads, paths, or lines of some sort. The metaphor of “idea as road” also has a lot of entailments. Roads are flat, two-dimensional, linear, finite, and narrow. They have edges. There are “rules of the road.” Starting points. Destinations. The properties of ideas seem very out of step with the properties of paths and roads. Ideas can be amorphous, rule-breaking, non-linear, multi-dimensional. They overlap with each other in strange and irregular ways.

The phrase is meant to convey authority, but it is also a plea for trust. Believe me, I can see more than you — so do as I say. ​ While these sights may amaze the neophyte air traveler, the window-seat view soon becomes routine — and yet it still manages to conserve its power in metaphor. ​ While everyone is invited to see things from 30,000 feet, not everyone is invited to stay there or make decisions from such an elevated position. ​ The expression enfolds a double maneuver: It shares a seemingly data-rich, totalizing perspective in an apparent spirit of transparency only to justify the restriction of power, the protection of a reified point of authority. ​ It’s not about flight at all: It is a vertical metaphor to negate horizontalism.

The phrase doesn’t really refer to the internet; it refers to a place, but not one that exists in any substantive way, concretely or even conceptually. Instead, it uses “offline” as a metaphor for a place that is simply Not Here. ​ while also providing a catch-all that allows one to blame technology for the annoying tendencies of its users.