Really interesting, but a correction should be noted: CC is for courtesy copy, not carbon copy
Ah, I did not know that!
Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
151–160 of 279 posts
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#152Icons are becoming dead metaphors, which is fine. We pick concrete concepts to represent abstract processes and eventually the concrete concept becomes obsolete. This is exactly what happens with language -- should we stop using the word "deadline" because we've forgotten what it used to mean before it became a metaphor for a due date?
I agree completely. Just because the original uses have stopped being so common doesn't mean the icons are bad now. In language terms, you could compare this to street names - very few people would know why the street they live on is named that way - its just useful that it has a name so people can find it.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#153Why do I have to still log-in to Facebook? Why can't I run Windows games on my iPad? Why can't I just talk to my computer like Star Trek? Programmers know why, but users don't. Same goes for icons: designers know what they're doing & why...
The question is why Facebook forces you to use an E-mail address as a user ID. Now THAT's amateur hour.
You can log in with your URL.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#154Icons are visual words, and like words, they have a history (etymology) which is often long forgotten. But even with their history lost, they become familiar as identifiers of a concept, and so we keep them for that reason.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#155Really interesting, but a correction should be noted: CC is for courtesy copy, not carbon copy
Ah, I did not know that!
Interesting, I did a little looking and it seems it means both. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc733 indicates carbon for BCC. It may be a backronym as Wikipedia mentions.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#156I have a handset in my house. Envelopes are still used for lots of things. I still get mail. I use screwdrivers pretty often, and I have access to wrenches. I recognize the old microphones from movies (and even if I didn't, they look similar to newer mics.) I've also used a polaroid in the past 5 years. I've also seen TV sets with "rabbit ears" in the past 5 years. The others I'm at least familiar with. I'm 18.
You are a renaissance person. I asked my 16 year old niece and she gets envelopes and tools but that's it.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#157There was a discussion on Reddit about this a few days ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t4z2o/the_save_ic... As pointed out by Mike Kazarnowicz in the comments of Scott's post. Coincidence or cherry-picking?
Coincidence. We had been tweeting about this a few days ago and many of the ideas were from my followers. Then my coworker Pete showed me his 2008 post on the topic http://10rem.net/blog/2008/11/18/when-will-the-floppy-disk-d... and later after I wrote it, the StackOverflow question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-still-a...
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#158The article began with an introduction to what could have been a really great dialogue. Why do those who didn't experience the inspiration for icons still inherently understand them? Yet it dropped that in favor of the same schtick for each icon.
Yes, I ran out of time. It could have been a great post.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#159This is awfully condescending towards people in their twenties and younger. > Want to indicate Settings or Setup to a twenty something? Show them a tool they've never used in their lives. > If you don't know who Johnny Carson is, how could you know that this is a old-style microphone? > No one under 30 has seen a Polaroid in years but we keep using them for icons. We don't live in a cultural vacuum where everything t…
For many of these it's more than just remembering them.
The following items I've used in the past week: Clipboard, bookmark, calendar (physical), folder (physical), handset phone, envelope, screwdriver.
And in the past decade: a microphone that looks exactly like the one pictured (use plenty of slightly less retro ones all the time), a Polaroid camera, a magnifying glass, binoculars, a voicemail-inspiring cassette, an address book, a floppy disk.
Over time they may become more and more forgotten, but a lot of them aren't that old - I'm 22 and the radio-button radio is the only one on the list I've never used.
Re: Old People Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore
#160There's a good article to be written on this subject, but this isn't it. "folders": we can go back to "directories" if you'd like. It's still what I say most of the time. "wrenches/screwdrivers/gears": This was the most baffling one. Who's never used a screwdriver? And he says it as if it's obvious. "phone": 75% of the US still has a landline (as of a year ago anyway), so I find "you haven't used this in 20 years" to…
I agree, I was very surprised that he doesn't even mention the "hourglass". It's true that it's less and less frequent but I would argue that it's more common than the floppy disk.
While "hourglass" may not be a commonly known term, I would imagine plenty of young kids still recognize it thanks to boardgames that involve them. Well, I hope plenty of young kids play boardgames, anyway.