Edit: I am sure you can think of more
Originally posted December 19, 2017 on AIXchange
Some months ago I saw this on Twitter, and it’s stuck with me:
@krhoyt Said “Do I sound like a broken record?” in a meeting, and wondered if it even made sense any more. Has it weathered the years? #getoffmylawnI guess that got me thinking about things that I say, and made me wonder why I still say them. Of course, readers of this blog know I’m old school. For instance, I still have a turntable and vinyl records, though I don’t listen to them as often as I once did. I like to buy reliable old cars, maintain them, and drive them into the ground. In addition, I still have a landline with a wired (not wireless) headset, and when people talk about Slack, it makes me reminisce about IRC.
But does anyone under the age of 45 actually understand what it means to sound like a broken record? Youngsters today, who hold a lifetime’s worth of music in their pockets, view cassettes as antique.
For that matter, why do we still say “hang up the phone” when we’re obviously just tapping the end call button on our smartphones? Or why does the save icon on most programs on your computer still look like a floppy disk? Few kids have even seen a floppy. Then again, when you want an image to symbolize saving a document, what other icon would make sense? Maybe a cloud?
Of course not everything old is necessarily bad. Sometimes things from our past even make a comeback. For instance, I’ve read about kids rediscovering TV antennas. Using this technology to get free over-the-air TV channels is mind-blowing for them.
I know I’m getting Seinfeldian here, but I really wonder about these things. And seriously, what is the deal with airline food?