Natural Resources

Roles: resource, extraction, refinement, depletion, reserve, consumption, waste, scarcity

Raw materials extracted from the natural environment for human use — oil, coal, minerals, water, timber. As a source domain, natural resources import a structure of extraction, refinement, consumption, and depletion. The frame carries assumptions about scarcity (resources run out), ownership (resources belong to whoever extracts them), and transformation (raw materials must be processed before they are useful). The extractive logic of natural resources is one of the most consequential metaphorical imports in technology discourse, shaping how we think about data, compute, and attention.

As Source Frame (2)

• Data Is Fuel → artificial-intelligence
• The Internet Is a Mine → artificial-intelligence

Applied To This Frame (1)

• science-fiction → Spice Is Scarce Enabling Resource