trapped in the paperless, wireless, timeless and spaceless office

Metaphors have different meanings in different cultures. Here’s the perfect example.

February, 2006. Sun Microsistems use a picture of the Catalan “castellers” (human towers) as a metaphor of team working in most homepages of their international corporate websites (see picture below).

Here are some sites where you can see the picture of the Catalan “castellers” as a metaphor of teamwork:

• Sun International
• Sun UK
• Germany
• Ireland
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Bulgaria

Here’s the Spanish website with another metaphor of teamwork (a picture of Sun’s founders):

Sun’s Spanish website

I assume it’s a matter of culture: the Catalan picture would be understood everywhere as teamwork except in Spain. Wonder why.