The Internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine. It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled ove...

The Internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine. It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and it is held together with the digital equivalent of duct tape and bubble gum. Much of it relies on open-source software that is thanklessly maintained by a small army of volunteer programmers who fix the bugs.

Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).

Considering the previous text and its linguistic aspects, judge the following item.

The author suggests that the Internet is, metaphorically speaking, a malfunctioning machine.