Nero burning program used an icon of the colosseum on fire to represent their burn button.
I see no issue with using a floppy disk.
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Nero burning program used an icon of the colosseum on fire to represent their burn button.
I see no issue with using a floppy disk.
That’s wasn’t just a disc….?
Nero - burning ROM
🤷♂️
Wow... I never made that connection. I feel stupid AF.
The pointer icon is an arrowhead, ~74000 years old. I don't want to hear people complaining about how old the floppy disk is.
It's similar to an arrowhead, but is it actually an arrowhead? Or is it just an arrow?
The idea that human society will make it to 4269 as well as the old Twitter logo at the bottom really dates this one. 😥
People probably said similar at the fall of every empire throughout history. People will endure and build anew. Life finds a way.
Most other empires didn't have the ability to destroy the ecosphere of the planet they lived on.
The modern empires can do it not just on purpose using nuclear weapons, but also accidentally through climate change.
Life will find a way, but will civilization? And will the dominant species still be humans?
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 ~~once~~ zero times and I'll say it again. Far-future hypothetical space aliens should RTFM.
How is the nuclear sign in any way universally understandable? It is properly by learning it's meaning.
It's intended to visually represent an atom with radiation emitting away from it.
It's not "univeral" in the sense that anyone could understand it, but in the sense that anyone who knows about what radiation is would have a clue - be them people now, or some far-future civilisation stumbling across a nuclear dump site, or aliens. It's a depiction of what is going on.
The symbol also uses elements of graphic design that make it feel unwelcoming and hostile even if you have no understanding at all. It's a design that clearly telegraphs "this is not a good thing"
Similar for the biohazard sign, which in its strange curves and spines looks almost "mutated"
I respect all the science and research in hostile design, but then I rember the chilli peppers, just trying to keep safe from mamals by simulating the feeling of fire in their mouths...
Evolution doesn't really work that way though. Peppers didn't evolve spiciness to keep animals away, they essentially randomly developed a mutation that made them unpalatable to most animals, and that increased their odds of survival. It's not doing X for Y reason, it's X happening with Y as a consequence.
There's KDE software (might be a Linux-wide thing, idk) that changed it to a down arrow pointing to a rectangle. I don't like it. I really don't fucking like it.
Me neither, it looks like it should mean "download".
The Floppy Disk is Computer Jesus. They both died to become the universal symbol of salvation. ;)
The call button is the handset of a landline. Emails are represented with envelopes. Camera apps have DSLR cameras on them. Folders/Directories look like the ones belonging in filing cabinets. The settings are a cog wheel...
My favourite are the kids excited that their mom 3D printed the save icon when she showed them a floppy disk.
Which never happens yet everyone repeats it as if it's a common occurrence.
I like the joke, but let's not pretend this is something that happens.
The various symbols found on audio and visual media comes from tape reel machines. Specifically the right arrow Play button only makes sense in relation to tape movement, yet we use it for just about any format to begin play.
I'd be surprised if using these kinds of point-and-click GUIs was still common in 2244 years, as opposed to some kind of language- or thought processing. Then again, people are still writing with pen and paper sometimes, despite all the digital advances.
Pen and paper is still the superior way to make your first draft and anyone who disagrees is wrong.
My wife coaches high school field hockey. She told me how one day she overheard them talking about how one of them lost their work on a homework document and had to start over.
One of the girls said "you just gotta get in the habit of clicking the blue square", which the others were confirming is the thing to do. So then my wife asks "blue square, what do you mean" and another clarified "the save button".
They had no idea what a floppy disc was
I had to explain the save button to my 9 year old about a week ago. And then I found myself explaining what a floppy disk was. Tonight I'll ask him if he knows what that is a picture of. I'll be impressed if he remembers. If he fails the check, imma gonna launch into a lecture on boot disks, games, and batch files. Wish me luck!
I've seen a growing number of programs that use an arrow pointing towards a picture of a computer or hard drive for "save* and an arrow pointing away from it for "load" and I feel like that's very graceful skeuomorph to shift to that might hold up for longer (although it breaks if it's talking about cloud save, but replace the picture of a computer with picture of a cloud and you're back in business I suppose)
I've seen those being used as download and upload but not for saving.
Skeuomorphism is the word your looking for, its why your digital cameras still make a mechanical click sound even through there isnt a mechanical shutter
Maybe, just maybe, someday it gets updated to an SD Card.
The idea of hover cars have always been so silly to me. Yes let's waste energy on counteracting gravity instead of just using a wheel lmao
They're good for rough terrain, so ironically a tractor is one of the less silly things to make hover
You got me there it does make sense for a tractor
Also the phone app icon still resembles one of those old banana units, even though phones haven't looked that way in 25+ years.
Path dependency
This is the future I want