Metaphorical musings

I believe the language and metaphors we use to describe our world shapes the possibilities we have for understanding and changing it. Here's a little metaphor I smoked one night...

I imagine information, content-seekers and content-creators as water showering, flooding, pooling and trickling through a dark, infinite space. The space is filled with myriad containers, overflows, drains, leaky pipes, mains, junctions, all sloping and trying to maximise the flows that pass through them. The whole complex is endlessly, rapidly shifting, reassembling itself into new configurations of convenience.

In Web2.0, information conduits and containers must be able to rapidly reposition themselves to catch and carry some of the myriad flows of information and individuals. This repositioning can be achieved partly through maintaining authority, interest and relevance, and partly through being an effective conduit to external sites of authority, interest and relevance.

I wonder whether the traditional library language of 'collections' should be replaced by web terminology such as 'content', to allow libraries to radically rethink their relationship with users.