I met a baby the other day who taught me that kids aren’t learning the thumb-and-pinky-out gesture for “phone” anymore. She puts her flat, open palm up to her ear and babbles into it, simulating a flat and rectangular smartphone.
It’s so interesting that a lot of seemingly obsolete hand motions still exist, though
very few people wear wristwatches, but tapping one’s wrist is still a nearly universal gesture for “what time is it?” or “hurry up”
I used classic corded phones for only a very brief time in my life (before we got those more rectangular-shaped cordless ones for my parents’ landline) and first saw a car without power windows when I was in college, and yet I’ve always used the pinky-and-thumb gesture for “call me” and the circling-fist gesture for “roll down your window.” I’m 24, so my childhood was the late 90s and early 2000s, but I still use gestures that indicate technology either gone or on its way out when I began forming reliable memories
it also makes me wonder how people indicated time or hurrying before wristwatches. did they somehow pantomime a pocket watch? what gestures have we lost as technology marches on? and since video didn’t exist for most of human history, how might we learn what they were? like the contents of the third Georgian spice jar or the location of Punt, nobody would think to write any of it down
I just love history so much
The ASL sign for phone is based on the pinky-and-thumb gesture. Presumably that will continue on for a while, with future generations seeing it as an arbitrary sign.
And then there are words like “rewind” that no longer make literal sense. Filmmakers still use “cut” long after actual physical film that can be cut fell out of use. We talk about cutting and pasting on computers and use a floppy disc icon for “save”.
Fossilized metaphors are the best.
So the cool thing about
skeuomorphisms (like the floppy disc icon) is that it’s entire basis is that, originally, the skeuomorph’s form had a resemblance to the literal processes it was referencing but that now they’re not referencing literal processes, but the abstract idea of those processes.
We’re not literally rewinding a tape when we hit rewind on our DVRs or DVD’s. Instead, we understand that to “rewind” is to reverse the playback of the video/audio, often at several times its normal speed. The word has changed from meaning the literal process which resulted in the desired effect to directly meaning the desired effect. This is something that just happens in language over time. I mean, shit, the British call flashlights “Torches” and that makes perfect sense.
Thing is, the only reason it seems weird to us is because we’ve seen and used the original things that the skeuomorphs and gestures are referencing. It’s not just a representation of an abstract idea like saving a file or cutting footage or making a call. We’ve used floppy discs and razors and corded telephone handsets. They were real, commonplace things in our lives and jobs.
It’s weird to us because we’re living in the transition period. It’ll stop being weird once we die and no one is around to remember the original thing.
Interestingly, “flashlight” is similar to “torch” in preserving a vestige of old technology. The first batteries had very little capacity. As a result, when using a flashlight, you didn’t keep it on continuously, since that would kill the batteries in no time flat. Instead, you’d turn it on for just brief flashes to preserve power. Hence, “flash-light”
Wanted to build a little on @sonic‘s comment about words like “rewind” has moved from meaning the literal process. As an ESL-person, there are so many English words we learn as children to mean just the one (often very specific) action. Like the word “play” which is a verb with a wide arrange of meanings in English. You can play music, sports, theatre, games, and so on. It can even be a noun. (And you can play a play, because English sucks and hates everyone.)
In Swedish “play” means “to make any type of recorded media start”. I’m not going to bother looking up if we have fully adopted this word as a Swedish, but seeing how I learned it 30 years ago I’d say yeah. “Shuffle” is even more narrow. It means “having the music player put songs in a random order”. “Shuffle” has become a verb, but “play” often needs help from the Swedish verb for “press”.
(Also, I asked a 19 yo what she thought the figure on the save button was, she said she thought it was an old filing cabinet, which I thought was fair enough.)
Several people have pointed out that in many countries outside the U.S., dates are written day/month rather than month/day, which would make Meat Day actually September 2nd. To which I would like to say:
1. In Japan it’s month/day, so February 9th would technically be the correct date 2. That being said… two Meat Days
My favorite bit of folk medicine is that we’re supposed to take wormwood for intestinal parasites. It’s actually really effective, which is how wormwood got its name, but the reason it’s effective is that wormwood is literally just poison and it happens to kill the worms slightly faster than it kills you.
That’s medicine BABEYYYYYY!!!!
No, but seriously, the reason plants have useful chemicals that we can use medicinally is because they have evolved those chemicals as poisons to prevent predation. Humans were just smart enough to figure out through trial and error how to balance these chemical extracts to counteract abnormalities in our bodies.
Like: “Hm. This plant toxin is a cardiac glycoside and increases heart output. In a healthy person, this is highly unpleasant and may even cause death. But… for my aging aunt over here who’s suffering from congestive heart failure… a little foxglove extract taken every morning with her tea would probably help her circulation and keep her weary heart kickin’ for a few more years.”
Medicine is the opportune application of poisons. Healers and poisoners are folks with similar skill sets and wildly different philosophies.
Speaking as a healer, conventional and metaphysical, you have to know what kills in order to know how to fix it.
