From a health webpage on mental overstimulation. This phrase is particularly interesting to me: “It can feel like you have too many tabs opened on your mental browser and your brain doesn’t know what to do.” What’s the idea behind using technological metaphors to describe something human? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? What does that tell us about the way we make sense of our everyday technologies? Hmm… 🤔

I am not sure I even understand this metaphor, as I don't keep tabs open on my browser over long periods. But "mental browser" sounds wrong in many ways.

I think I know what you mean @Konrad Hinsen. Maybe “mental browser” here is actually “mental plate”, and overstimulation is piling so much food onto it that it starts bending.

I keep ~2000 tabs open at a time and Firefox has no issues (other than starting back up after a reboot) Arguably though, this is as human a metaphor as any tool-based one. 'She had the wind in her sails', 'They popped a gasket', 'He pushed their buttons' etc

Yes, but I think more interested in that blending of self with something else (in this case, browser, but you also mentioned the parts of a boat and a car). I don’t know what to call that, and so I’d be curious to learn what that means.