Ever notice how many computer terms and jingo harkens back to technologies or concepts from yesteryear? Here are a few off the top of my head:
- CC - we use the term CC (short for carbon copy) in regards to email today, but the term originates from replicating a typed document... on paper... using a piece of carbon paper.
- Cut and paste - today Cut means Ctrl+X and paste means Ctrl+V, but there used to be a time when cut meant getting out the scissors and paste meant cracking open the bottle of glue, as typed documents were edited by literally cutting out one paragraph and pasting it elsewhere.
- Line feed, carriage return - in text files you enter a line break using the ol' line feed, carriage return ASCII characters. vbCrLf in VB, or \r\n for those who prefer semicolons. This terminology dates back to typewriters, where a line feed advanced the cyllinder one line and a carriage return returned the typing carriage back to home position.
- Ring - a term used when discussing phone calls - 'I'll give you a ring around six.' There was a time when telephones actually had metallic bells in them that would literally ring. Even when the bell was replaced by electronic speakers, most telephones still made a ringing sound when one called. But with cell phones and custom ring tones it's likely that this term will die off sooner than later.
What's interesting is how these antequated terms sort of melded into the modern lexicon and how the terms themselves lose their historical context. Of course it shouldn't be surprising, seeing that most technology is just an improved or smaller or flashier version of yesterday's, and laguage is thought of and defined in terms of one's own context, not the context of their elders.
What other anachronisms in technology-related terminology can you think of?