Notice how much of today’s new technology is named after old technology?
Like your phone. It’s a small, hand-held computer that
includes a phone app. And the actual calling part (the reason we named it a phone)
might be the least important thing it does. Yet we still call it a phone.
Same with your ring tone. Nothing rings. There’s no bell, just
a digital chirp chosen from a menu with choices like “Marimba” and “Cosmic
Dolphin.” But we still say the phone is ringing, because once upon a time phones
had little bells that actually rang.
And when we’re done with a call, we “hang up” … because in yesterday’s
technology when a call was over, you’d hang up part of the phone on a little
hook. A far cry from tapping a button on a handheld device.
For privacy, you can “turn” the ringer off, even though
there’s nothing to turn, just a tap on a screen. Why? It goes back to the knobs
and valves on gas lamps (when controlling technology required at least one
minor muscle group).
Listen to podcasts on your phone? The name podcast comes
from combining part of the name of the now obsolete iPod and a radio term: broadcast.
And radio stole broadcast from a farming practice: to cast your seeds broadly
Technology sprints forward like it’s late for something
important. Language lags behind, walking with a cane, refusing to update its
software.
I’m sort of comforted that all this talk of living in the future
is grounded in vocabulary from the past … like hand-me-down clothes that
somehow still fit. Makes the scary part of technology innovation seem safer:
stubbornly human, messy, sentimental, and slow.
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