The Internet as Place and Person

Why do we anthropomorphize the internet?

As the internet has aged and evolved, the way we talk about it has changed.

Joanne McNeil writes in her fantastic book Lurking (emphasis mine):

People used to talk about the internet as a place. The information superhighway. A frontier. The internet was something to get on. Even the desktop metaphor was in turn clarifying, then confusing: it helped people…