The way things were
I recently had a bout of the Seasonal Flu, and one of the few bonuses was that I lay in bed and watched old episodes of The Antiques Roadshow. There is something so gloriously timeless about the show, how a medieval glass goblet looks pretty much the same now as it did in the '70s.
Carriage POE Anat Lounge car photo on Flickr by Simon Pielow
Somebody brought in an antique railway set from the 1850s, when this new-fangled technology was causing awe and ire in equal measure across the land. The railway carriages looked very quaint, and then I realised they looked horse carraiges.
It had never occurred to me before, the language of the past was being used to describe the present.
The digital world is shot through with such examples. The desktop metaphor, the rubbish bin, a filing cabinet, a pasteboard. Heck, there are even these things called pages on that there internet. This is a hangover from Olde Worlde bookes, which were made up of pulped dead trees.
What will today's paradigms be that will echo so eloquently in the future?