The fact that we still say 'record store?'
"Don't touch that dial!"

On the same level as your voicemail icon, email is always depicted as a little envelope.

Most of the software you use has archaic stuff in it: cut, copy, paste, files, folders... Apparently, big businesses lack imagination, which is why they haven't been able to come up with anything better than the good old archives. Thankfully, the filing cabinet icon is rarely used these days. Its replacement, the floppy disk, has become almost as archaic, though.

Oh, Christ, I did an AskMecha on this very subject (looking for a word to connote them that wasn't a sniglet), but I can't find it.

Apparently, big businesses lack imagination, which is why they haven't been able to come up with anything better than the good old archives

I really don't think it's lack of imagination. We are physical beings, used to a physical world, and these names serve as metaphors for concrete activities which our brains already have a schema for. I actually think in many ways it's brilliant to apply these metaphors to virtual systems, rather than requiring people to learn two separate paradigms.

I once went to an absolutely mind-blowing lecture on the development of office systems. Simple things like the index card have an amazing history -- they didn't just come from nowhere. The index card was invented after the Civil War when hospitals and the government had to work together to keep track of vast numbers of veterans, their complicated cases, and their benefits. Similarly, the file folder and hanging file all evolved, in their own time, as state-of-the-art information technology. New ideas. And compared to the chaotic organizational systems of times before the 19th century, they're pretty darn elegant!

I do hate Windows, though. I mean, when I want to move a real file, I just move the darn thing from drawer to drawer without having to bat down a dialog box and negotiate a floating menu. Yeesh!

"I do hate Windows, though. I mean, when I want to move a real file, I just move the darn thing from drawer to drawer without having to bat down a dialog box and negotiate a floating menu. Yeesh!"

Oh man wait until you see MS office 2007. No more tool bars. Just "the ribbon" that changes acording to what it thinks you need and has pictures pop up rather than text. Nasty junk.

On a related note: The other day I was leaving what I thought was a voicemail message at an office, and suddenly the person I was calling picked up the phone. It was an answering machine, and she was screening calls. It totally discombobulated me to have her pick up like that; I've gotten used to voicemail.

Miko: I've heard that the Babylonians had worked out an excellent way of gathering and archiving all sorts of data for governing purposes. What they lacked, however, was an equally good way of making sense of all this data they were gathering. Eventually, the system sort of collapsed under the load of clay tablet.

The metaphors discussed have proven to be very useful, but in many cases, they're already starting to become a bit too narrow. As long as the file systems are simple, finding things is easy. But the more things you file, the more difficult they are to find. Knowing their name and location isn't enough, as you would still have to know where you put things. If you have a few hundred gigs of media files, this won't be an easy task. Making the computer remember things for you would make the task of finding them a lot easier.

Folders are for Luddites.
Long live tag and search!

My favorite examples would be any of the tools in Photoshop, especially "dodge" and "burn." When I was in photography in college, I had a friend who was in graphic design come visit me in the darkroom. I was trying to correct the contrast, and when I told her the name of the process was "dodging" it was like a lightbulb went off in her head - she never knew it was an actual technique in photo developing, she'd only ever used it in Photoshop.

Little signifiers like these make people feel more comfortable with a new technology, the easiest way to make people at home with any GUI is to make a mental connection to what it's replacing. It's like a security blanket. And when the day comes that our physical blankets are replaced by thousands of nano machines covering our body with heat-emitting diodes, that will have an on button with a picture of a blanket on it.

Others:
-"wiring" money
-CC (carbon copying)
-Volume/music symbol is often a little gramophone-looking thing, addresses/numbers are stored in the "phone book."
-"ring tones" - as if there is still an actual bell in your phone, ringing away.

Calling the truckdrivers' union (at least here in the States) "Teamsters," a word that goes back to the time when drivers actually were managing a team of horses.

What other examples can people think of?

Duh. "Clockwise".

Cars are full of obsolete terminology whose origin we've forgotten. "Taximeter cabriolet" is obvious. "Sedan" (or the British "saloon car") and "coupe" are also holdovers. It's funny that there are still in the 21st century cars on the market that have the barest hint of a leather buggy top, denoting of course luxury.

Whoops, posted instead of another preview.

Cars also have a "windshield" (as if the entire cabin isn't sealed now), a "glovebox", (for those leather driving gloves, silly, not the owner's manual and an expired M&Ms bag), "parking lights" (not actually used for parking anymore), and even "running boards" (who uses those? the Dukes of Hazzard?). "Bumpers", of course, no longer do much bumping -- they're supposed to crumple in an accident, absorbing the collision force instead of transferring it.

And of course we measure engines in "horsepower" ...

jason's: Funny, my mom was a Teamster once, because the local AFSCME was briefly affiliated with them. She's a social worker! Other social workers were represented by the Machinist's Union ...

Eventually, the system sort of collapsed under the load of clay tablet.

Ah, the origin of the sinking library urban legend.

What else? "Post office" comes from the resting posts, or stations, that horse messengers used, and "mail" comes from the bag to carry letters. Meanings completely absent from modern usage.

I'm still amused that one of my first job titles was "word processor".

Oh, now, don't get me started on legal terminology ...

I was going to mention my favorite example, carbon copy, but it's already been mentioned.

On unix-like systems, each command session still has a tty (teletypewriter) associated with it, which dates back to the days when you used to actually use a teletypewriter to access these machines. In some cases it's called a pty (pseudoterminal) when it refers to a virtual master/slave pair that's not actually associated with any particular physical serial interface. Or hell, even the notion of "use a terminal" or "bring up a terminal" harkens back to this. See also LPT1: (Windows) and lpr (unix), both of which refer to a "lineprinter" which I don't think anyone has seen in a long time. And those ascii characters "carriage return" and "line feed" that delimit lines of text to this day.

Not archaic, exactly, and not technology (then why am I commenting? just shut up, you!), but a friend was recently laughing over the phrase "the best thing since sliced bread", since packaged sliced bread is without a doubt just about the worst bread you will ever put in your mouth.

I like to confound people by saying "the best thing since sliced pudding".

"Post office" comes from the resting posts, or stations, that horse messengers used, and "mail" comes from the bag to carry letters.

Yeah, and when posting a letter from Detroit to Chicago, Post No. VI is still called that. Only they crammed it all together and made it one word: Novi, Michigan.

Long live tag and search!

Tagging is cool, but it's generally applied in too sprawling and indiosyncratic a way to be completely reliable, which is why I still like branching categories as an organizational method.

As a sailor, I always enjoy the way that air flight borrows a great deal of its terminology from waterborne travel. You embark and disembark, or board and debark (bark being the same as the root word of the vessels barke/barque and barkentine); the cabin runs fore and aft, the captain and navigator talk of port and starboard, as they sit on flight decks or in the cockpits, using rudders to control the craft's pitch and roll. There are more than I can think of right now.

When I first noticed this I wondered why we didn't apply terms like 'port' and 'starboard' to cars, where it would be pretty useful. But It makes a lot of sense; navigating a plane uses many of the same skills as navigating a waterborne vessel, and the air is a fluid as is the water, so some of the physics are similar. Both sailing and flying are all about using lift to overcome drag. Whereas the language of cars seems to have evolved from horse-drawn conveyances.