Yes, but people used to know that “modem” = “those funny noises on your phone line”. Now laypeople don’t have a “modem”, they just have “that internet box the

Yes, but people used to know that “modem” = “those funny noises on your phone line”. Now laypeople don’t have a “modem”, they just have “that internet box the ISP technician plugged in when I signed up”. The word modem went out of popular currency too fast for it to ever spawn the kinds of more general metaphors we are talking about in this discussion.