h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I usually save my files with Ctrl-S, but sometimes I will click on the diskette icon.

But kids these days probably don't even know what a diskette is, so how long will that icon continue to symbolise saving a file?

And how many other pictograms use old-fashioned pictures of things which will soon become obsolete, except in the pictograms?

I can think of:

Baby-changing rooms picturing a baby with a triangular nappy
Telephone icons picturing an old telephone with dial and receiver
Level crossings with the little steam train (are they still around?)
Not to mention women in dresses on the ladies' loos. I bet a lot of kids have never even seen their mum in a dress.


The trouble is, the modern alternatives are difficult to reduce to a few lines as would be required for a pictogramm.

http://www.globalnerdy.com/2014/01/21/a-joke-about-the-floppy-disk-in-2014-and-the-alphabet-of-the-obsolete/

"Not to mention women in dresses on the ladies' loos. I bet a lot of kids have never even seen their mum in a dress" [TC]

I walk through a lot of shopping malls, marveling at the dresses in the windows of a lot of the shops. I also see a lot of young families, complete with children, window shopping. Even if some children haven't seen their mothers wearing dresses, chances are the kids have seen a lot of dresses in store windows. Or maybe they've seen Smurfette wearing a dress. [Quickly tries to think of other popular children's movies featuring female characters].

[Takes deep breath]. Dorothy wore a dress in "The Wizard of Oz." Annie wore a dress in "Annie." Anne of Green gables did, too. Also Nancy Drew.

Do women wear dresses in television shows?

Gotta love the first image at Gnomon's link.
The "old" dude is wearing a T-shirt with the number 42.

BTW I'm gonna post that same link to Maria's thread
about Moribund Words. Thanks.

~jwf~

Yes - that link is spot on! Thanks, Gnomon!

I've just thought of another obsolete picture: The scales (as used in the depictions of Justitia) I'm not asking that they arm her with an electronic weighing device on top of the Old Bailey and legal courts around the world, but it's hardly a symbol to use for any other kind of scales these days.

I use a balance for weighing cooking ingredients.

The hourglass (egg timer) symbol used to indicate 'please wait' while an application is loading seems pretty archaic.

F.

Now you mention it, the 'wheel of death' is a bit archaic. It's representative of a cog wheel turning, but when did computers ever have cogs?

And the Apple Mac 'beachball of death', too. When did you last see giggling bikini-clad lovelies at the beach content to toss a beachball to each other? They're probably out kite-surfing these days. Or do they go to the beach at all? They're more likely to follow the cycle of tanning studio - bar - club - hotel.

Not a picture but a sound - my car's turn signal makes a clicking sound but this is electronically generated to mimic the sound of a clicking relay like those used in earlier cars. It even changes the click rate if a bulb has failed as did the thermal relays originally used.

F.

"Now you mention it, the 'wheel of death' is a bit archaic. It's representative of a cog wheel turning, but when did computers ever have cogs?" [Icy North]

Computers don't have to have cogs in any literal sense. Icons that turn clockwise are analogies for the passage of time while a computer is loading. The earth turns once every twenty-four hours or so. No amount of digitalization is going to stop the planet from turning.

Icy asked "When did computers ever have cogs?"


Methinks Icy is prodding - methinks he actually knows and I'm falling into his trap...

look up "antikythera mechanism"

And I'd call that archaic.

Babbage had them too, I'm guessing. Need to check...

Well, it all depends on how you define 'computer', eh?"

The abacus
...
Colossus
ENIAC
...

today's marvels

also
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears-of-war-when-mechanical-analog-computers-ruled-the-waves/

Aye, BB.

It's clever, it's newer, it's therefore better...

Whoops, sorry, I've derailed the congo.


As You Were

There are probably cogs in the HDD and the DVD drive.

PP.

Storage? Pah!

Does the mouse wheel count as a cog?

The UK road sign for an uneven road surface (What Ronnie Barker called two poached eggs on toast) shows a flat road with raised bumps. All the uneven roads I find these days are flat with big pot-holes.