Microsoft WindowsA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZW(PC) software that has bestrode the computer
world like the proverbial colossus. Harvard
graduates Bill Gates and Paul Allen, later joined
by Steve Ballmer, were among the fi rst entrepre-
neurs to spot the future of personal computers.
They formed a business partnership in 1975,
naming it Microsoft (microcomputer software).
By 1980 they were able to off er the world, via
the IBM company, M-DOS (Microsoft Disk
Operating System), the fi rst personal, desktop
computer (1981).
By 1983, the new Windows System (1.0)
described by Bill Gates as ‘unique software
designed for the serious PC user’ hit the market,
followed by Windows 2.0 (1987) with expanded
memory and increased desktop facility. Th ere
followed, each an advance upon the last, fi fteen
editions of Windows, among them Windows 3.0
(1990) and 3.1 (1992), this with advanced graph-
ics and add-on games such as Solitaire.
Windows 95 (1995) came complete with
built-in internet support, dial-up networking
and Plug and Play facilities, and featured for the
fi rst time the Start menu and task bar. Major
improvements to networking and support for
mobile computing and USB devices came with
Windows 2000. Released in 2001, Windows
XP carried new design features and enhanced
digital photo capabilities. Windows XP Profes-
sional was followed between 2006 and 2008
with Windows Vista (with advanced Windows
Media Player, known as Longhorn) available in
thirty-fi ve languages. Windows 7 introduced the
capacity for users to stream (see streaming)
music, videos and photos from the PC to a TV
or stereo system.
Th e Microsoft company celebrated its twenty-
fi fth anniversary in 2010. Over those twenty-fi ve
years it encountered problems – and was faced
with court cases – concerning copyright. For
example, in 1990 rival apple macintosh cited
189 examples of what it claimed were copyright
infringements, the judge reducing these to ten
instances. In 2001 the company was obliged by
the American Department of Justice to share
(rather than hog) systems with a panel of experts.
In 2003 the European Commission demanded
that Microsoft produce a Windows package
without Windows Media Player and to create
a version without Internet Explorer; all in all,
moves to counteract Microsoft’s perceived
monopoly of the market. Microsoft initially
began such a version but then scrapped it in
favour of a ‘browser ballot’ allowing users to
make a choice between providers.
Windows has struggled to establish itselfsuch as transport; thus we refer to crashes, fast
and slow lanes and blocked traffi c; or we opt for
the experience of markets – shopping malls or
even the more humble fl ea-market. Th e compe-
tition for labelling the Net is signifi cant. What
names it goes by has an impact on the ways in
which communities view and use it. See euphe-
mism; metonymy; visions of order. See also
topic guide under language/discourse/
narrative.
Metasignal A signal that makes a comment
about a signal, or a set of signals: it directs us
to their accurate meaning. For example, two
people appear to exchange blows: is the fi ght real
or make-believe? Th eir smiling faces form the
metasignal which indicates that, at least on the
surface, what we are seeing is a play-fi ght.
Body posture is among the chief metasignals.
Equally, uniform serves eff ectively in this capac-
ity; we react differently to the policeman in
uniform than we might to the same person in
off -duty jeans and tee-shirt. Desmond Morris in
Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behav-
iour (Jonathan Cape, 1977) says that ‘in a sense
the whole world of entertainment presents a
non-stop Metasignal, in the form of the prosce-
nium arch around the stage of a theatre, or the
edge of the cinema or TV screen’. Audiences, he
believes, can tolerate, and gain entertainment
from, fi lms and plays featuring dollops of death
and mayhem because of the metasignals which
indicate that ‘this isn’t real’. Morris argues that
though the actors may aim at maximum reality
in their dark deeds, ‘no matter how convincing
they are, we still carry at the back of our minds
(even as we gasp when the knife plunges home)
the Metasignal of the “edge” of their stage’.
▶Desmond Morris, People Watching (Vantage, 2002).
Metonymy A figure of speech in which the
thing meant is represented by something that
is an attribute of the original. When we talk of
the newspaper business, we refer to the press –
something that stands for the whole.
As far as images are concerned, the metonym
is a selection of one of those available to repre-
sent the whole; and from that selection fl ows our
interpretation or understanding of the whole.
Th us the selection of a piece of fi lm of young
people lounging at a street corner, or strike pick-
ets in combat with the police, acts as the ‘trigger
of meaning’ for the way the teenager or the
striker is defi ned. For this reason, metonyms are
powerful conveyors of reality; indeed they are so
powerful that they can come to be accepted as
reality – as the way things actually are.
Microsoft Windows The personal computer