A metonymy is a figure of speech that is used regularly without the user realizing it. A good example of metonymy is the expression White House for the people making decision inside the oval office, or Wall Street as the city’s financial center represented by the New York stock market, or Hollywood for the movie “industry” in LA. Similar to a metaphor, a metonymy reflects the unconscious depth of language underscoring layers of subliminal symbols, connections and messages.
The Internet as metonymy is defined as a kernel that propagates other peripheral mediums, like hypertext markup language (HTML), the World Wide Web (WWW) and all other applications. In this sense it overshadows the meaning of Internet as the physical network of hardware like telephone lines, fiber-optic cables and satellites, servers, etc… The applications are simply mediums existing within a physical network of interconnections.
