Metaphors of home are used in domesticating a medium, but they also carry certain histories, meanings and associations with them, that are in turn productive. Metaphors make a medium understandable by linking it to other media and surrounding culture, but doing this they also invest this medium meaning. Home improvement and interior decoration can be a useful analogy to homepage manuals. Alternative homes Homepages have recently been discussed in relation to identity, situatedness and location in postcolonial theory. Hamid Naficy, for example, discusses the different shelter magazines in print and on the WWW, as well as TV programmes on housing, in relation to themes of exile and a current interest in the theme of home in and outside the Academia.
Home is thus something mental, a sense of belonging and situating the self.
Norms, limitations, and discrimination rise forth when home is no longer a transparent point of reference, but a concept under debate and redefinition. It is not difficult to see the white, Western, heterosexual, middle-class male as the model of Internet user. This position is an invisible norm against which various others are defined, and also one that renders these differences invisible in articulations of Internet use. Homes can thus be reclaimed, rebuilt and redefined as nodes for social interaction, activism and criticism. Not a safe haven but an unsteady alignment, these homes are situational and temporary, and wide enough to house differences.