It’s only universally recognized because of precedent. The true challenge is to create something that can be understood by someone that has no background with computers (or whatever)
Like the radiation ☢️ thing, danger ⚠️ , are supposed to be examples of this. Radiation more so because it’s not supposed to rely on language even
Now excuse me while I press the call button on my phone which is shaped like a landline handset from 30 years ago
For sure, but it doesn’t actually matter whether it’s abstract from the outset or has become abstract through technological advance so long as it’s unique and understood. Someone who’s never seen a floppy disk will still learn it quickly, because it’s distinctive.
But what if we go extinct and computers remain functional? will aliens that discover our planet be able to save their documents? Did you think about that??
It’s interesting how that precedent happened though.
30 years ago saving something basically involved taking a floppy, putting it into the floppy drive, and then hitting a “save” button. That was often because computers didn’t even have a hard drive. And, when they did have a hard drive, having your files on a floppy drive was basically the only way to get them onto another computer. So, because of that, a floppy drive was pretty universally recognized as a place where you saved files.
In the time since then, saving to a hard drive became more common. But, it’s hard to use a hard drive as an image for “save” because only computer geeks know what a hard drive actually looks like. Even if you could get people to recognize a hard drive icon it’s also ambiguous because you use your hard drive for many other things other than saving. Finally, it’s also less necessary to put the save files on external media, because you can email them, upload them, save to the cloud, etc.
The only physical media where people still save things is USB thumb drives. So, you could put in an image of a USB thumb drive, which more people would recognize, but that’s more ambiguous because people only save files to a thumb drive in certain specific cases. It’s also harder because there’s not really a globally recognized thumb drive image. All floppy drives had to look more or less identical because of the constraints of the disk drive system. But, USB drives only have to have the USB part in common – and in some cases that’s hideable or retractable.
I like it. It’s universally recognisable, you know what it means and what it does.
It’s only universally recognized because of precedent. The true challenge is to create something that can be understood by someone that has no background with computers (or whatever)
Like the radiation ☢️ thing, danger ⚠️ , are supposed to be examples of this. Radiation more so because it’s not supposed to rely on language even
Now excuse me while I press the call button on my phone which is shaped like a landline handset from 30 years ago
For sure, but it doesn’t actually matter whether it’s abstract from the outset or has become abstract through technological advance so long as it’s unique and understood. Someone who’s never seen a floppy disk will still learn it quickly, because it’s distinctive.
But what if we go extinct and computers remain functional? will aliens that discover our planet be able to save their documents? Did you think about that??
I’ve said it
oncezero times and I’ll say it again. Far-future hypothetical space aliens should RTFM..not_porn
Looks like a Switch cartridge as well, so no, that’s gonna be lost soon.
By that argument, it looks like an SD card.
I’d argue that the
insanely satisfying stim toyshutter of the floppy keeps it unique, though.It’s interesting how that precedent happened though.
30 years ago saving something basically involved taking a floppy, putting it into the floppy drive, and then hitting a “save” button. That was often because computers didn’t even have a hard drive. And, when they did have a hard drive, having your files on a floppy drive was basically the only way to get them onto another computer. So, because of that, a floppy drive was pretty universally recognized as a place where you saved files.
In the time since then, saving to a hard drive became more common. But, it’s hard to use a hard drive as an image for “save” because only computer geeks know what a hard drive actually looks like. Even if you could get people to recognize a hard drive icon it’s also ambiguous because you use your hard drive for many other things other than saving. Finally, it’s also less necessary to put the save files on external media, because you can email them, upload them, save to the cloud, etc.
The only physical media where people still save things is USB thumb drives. So, you could put in an image of a USB thumb drive, which more people would recognize, but that’s more ambiguous because people only save files to a thumb drive in certain specific cases. It’s also harder because there’s not really a globally recognized thumb drive image. All floppy drives had to look more or less identical because of the constraints of the disk drive system. But, USB drives only have to have the USB part in common – and in some cases that’s hideable or retractable.
You can make calls on your phone. I gotta text my friends this