The ghosts of technology in today’s language (2018)(medium.com)
medium.com
The ghosts of technology in today’s language (2018)
https://medium.com/@mwichary/the-ghost-tech-in-todays-language-c3becc9ae30b
57 comments
By the way, forcibly moderating the speed by grasping the governor was referred to in Victorian times (not making this up) as "cupping the governor's balls" which was one of those "plausible deniability" phrases (it was literally true so if someone objected they were the ones with the dirty mind).
Ahahah, came here to mention this. You beat me to it! Also called "balls to the wall".
Balls to the wall has a different etymology. It implies pushing a throttle lever all the way forward. An airplane version of “pedal to the metal”.
“Balls out” and “balls to the wall” are two different technological metaphors with the same general idea though (going at top speed).
“Balls out” and “balls to the wall” are two different technological metaphors with the same general idea though (going at top speed).
I had a very different assumption of where those phrases came from until now
How uncanny. I was thinking about this in one of my lectures today after seeing that my lecturer spelt "online" as "on line" in one of his presentation slides.
It turns out that the origin of the term "on line" dates back all the way to the telegraph industry!
If y'all don't follow Marcin Wichary on Twitter you're missing out on a lot of great content. He's consistently highlighting interesting intersections of history, technology, and how humans live within it all.
Twitter can often times be an unpleasant place and he's always a bright spot in the noise: https://twitter.com/mwichary
Twitter can often times be an unpleasant place and he's always a bright spot in the noise: https://twitter.com/mwichary
Here is one of my favorite threads by Marcin: https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/996056615928266752
"Album" meaning "blank tablet" in Latin is interesting because it seems to have the word "white" in it, same as in albumen (egg whites) and Albion (home of the White Cliffs).
Yeah, a classic word formation pattern of using only a (visual) feature of an object to name and distinguish it. EtymOnline's explanation makes the connection even more direct:
> from Latin album, which in classical times was a board chalked or painted white, upon which public notices (the Annales Maximi, edicts of the praetor, lists of senators, etc.) were inscribed in black, hence "a list of names." This Latin word was revived 16c. by German scholars, whose custom was to keep an album amicorum of colleagues' signatures; its meaning then expanded to "book with blank leaves meant to collect signatures and other souvenirs."
> Latin album is literally "white color, whiteness;" it is a noun use of the neuter of the adjective albus "white"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/album
> from Latin album, which in classical times was a board chalked or painted white, upon which public notices (the Annales Maximi, edicts of the praetor, lists of senators, etc.) were inscribed in black, hence "a list of names." This Latin word was revived 16c. by German scholars, whose custom was to keep an album amicorum of colleagues' signatures; its meaning then expanded to "book with blank leaves meant to collect signatures and other souvenirs."
> Latin album is literally "white color, whiteness;" it is a noun use of the neuter of the adjective albus "white"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/album
So I suppose this would make one of The Beatles' seminal hits roughly translate to The Album Album?
Albion comes from early Celtic rather than Latin. Originally naming all of Britain it changed at some point to refer to just Scotland, and gave the modern Scots Gaelic of Alba for Scotland.
According to this source it comes likely from latin
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Albion+
Interesting, I stand corrected. OED says it comes from Old English, from Latin, probably of Celtic origin, and also make mention of albus...
That may be their bets being hedged. :)
That may be their bets being hedged. :)
Does Albion really mean Scotland in English? It means England in French.
There's no real common modern usage of "Albion" except in the name of football teams (West Bromwich Albion, Albion Rovers, Stirling Albion) - so it doesn't really mean one more than the other in English. Some people might say it comes from an old celtic word and therefore refers to Scotland, others might say it's from Latin and refers to England or the whole island of Britain. I've no idea which is "right" but the word just doesn't come up in everyday English.
Aside from the football teams mentioned, just about the only context you may hear Albion is occasionally old poetry and literature, or the famous 18th or 19th century French use of "Perfidious Albion".
It morphed into the modern Alba for Scotland, stemming from the same source, but I'm not sure quite of the overlap from Albion to Alba.
It morphed into the modern Alba for Scotland, stemming from the same source, but I'm not sure quite of the overlap from Albion to Alba.
> what would be the oldest extant word based on technology no longer in use
Hard to beat “calculate”, which is about finding numerical answers by moving pebbles around a counting board.
Hard to beat “calculate”, which is about finding numerical answers by moving pebbles around a counting board.
Many of these technologies are really old, burning the midnight oil refers to oil lamps that date back at lest, 15,000 years ago. Various sailing references date back a minimum of 7,500 years old but could easily be much older technology.
Computing via moving pebbles could easily be a surprisingly recent idea ~500 BCE, but again it’s very difficult to date this stuff.
Computing via moving pebbles could easily be a surprisingly recent idea ~500 BCE, but again it’s very difficult to date this stuff.
> Computing via moving pebbles could easily be a surprisingly recent idea ~500 BCE
By the 5th century BCE, Herodotus was writing about how Egyptians and Hellenes used their counting boards in different ways; by that point the technology was apparently widespread and taken for granted.
It’s hard to judge when a counting board with an explicit place-value system (where the tokens could represent different quantities depending on position) first arose, but I’d guess no later than like 2000 BCE, and possibly much earlier.
If you allow “pebbles” to also include little clay counters, and counting with them to include piling them up and changing units by trading one type of counter for another, then we have physical examples from 7500 BCE.
We have much older evidence still of counting via tally marks, because as archaeological evidence those are relatively easy to interpret. If people longer ago were counting with pebbles there’s almost no way we’d know it.
* * *
> burning the midnight oil refers to oil lamps that date back at lest, 15,000 years ago
I take this phrase to mean doing some kind of scholarly work (reading/writing) late into the night. Apparently comes from Quarles (1635), Emblemes: “Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle; Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.” So while burning stuff to make light is an old technology, this is not too old a metaphor.
Can you think of sailing metaphors which etymologically arose thousands of years ago, in forms still used? Obviously literal words like “ship”, “mast”, “row”, “sheet”, “wind”, “knot”, etc. are very old.
Also, sailing is a technology still in use. :-)
By the 5th century BCE, Herodotus was writing about how Egyptians and Hellenes used their counting boards in different ways; by that point the technology was apparently widespread and taken for granted.
It’s hard to judge when a counting board with an explicit place-value system (where the tokens could represent different quantities depending on position) first arose, but I’d guess no later than like 2000 BCE, and possibly much earlier.
If you allow “pebbles” to also include little clay counters, and counting with them to include piling them up and changing units by trading one type of counter for another, then we have physical examples from 7500 BCE.
We have much older evidence still of counting via tally marks, because as archaeological evidence those are relatively easy to interpret. If people longer ago were counting with pebbles there’s almost no way we’d know it.
* * *
> burning the midnight oil refers to oil lamps that date back at lest, 15,000 years ago
I take this phrase to mean doing some kind of scholarly work (reading/writing) late into the night. Apparently comes from Quarles (1635), Emblemes: “Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle; Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.” So while burning stuff to make light is an old technology, this is not too old a metaphor.
Can you think of sailing metaphors which etymologically arose thousands of years ago, in forms still used? Obviously literal words like “ship”, “mast”, “row”, “sheet”, “wind”, “knot”, etc. are very old.
Also, sailing is a technology still in use. :-)
> If you allow “pebbles” to also include little clay counters, and counting with them to include piling them up and changing units by trading one type of counter for another, then we have physical examples from 7500 BCE.
What’s your source on that? I would be really interested in checking it out.
What’s your source on that? I would be really interested in checking it out.
Check out Denise Schmandt-Besserat’s work, http://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/
Electric cars still have a gas pedal :-)
accelerator
No they don't. You just use the wrong word. Try accelerator.
We can compromise and call it the "throttle" :-)
One of my favorites is from VLSI. Finishing a chip is still called "Tape out" even though we quit using magtape for sending the design files to fab years ago.
Cassette. That was a household word, right? Both for video and music cassettes. I haven't heard that word in many years, now.
Fun fact, the word 'cassette' refers to the plastic box, not the tape inside. It's a 'cassette tape' because the tape is protected inside a cassette. You used to be able to get CD cassette drives where you had to put the CD into a removable cassette which you then inserted into the drive.
bicycles have a cassette of gears
Genetic cassettes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_cassette
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_cassette
I didn't know that was called a cassette. I always assumed cassettes were a type of cartridge with reeled tape.
The etymology of English "cassette" appears to come from the French word for "little box", which makes sense for tape cassettes but not for bicycle gearing. Considering that bicycle cassettes were invented in the 70s whereas tape cassettes are from the 60s, I'd be curious to know the reason for the name.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/cassette
https://www.etymonline.com/word/cassette
Little box to hold a removable piece or mechanism, so seems a bit of a stretch unless cassette gears pop out for replacement? There were far earlier uses. The box that held the glass plates in early plate cameras was called a cassette.
I figured it was from case + -ette, like a small case.
Colloquially, tape as a synonym for record (verb), or to 'get something on tape'. I'm still guilty of using it sometimes.
Round our way if something is rubbish, it's often referred to as "bobbins":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbin
Checks and balances refers to James Watt era machinery. IIRC, couldn't google.
Kubernetes/Cyber/Gubernotorial/Governor means rudder.
Kubernetes/Cyber/Gubernotorial/Governor means rudder.
They should have also mentioned the word "modem", which is actually an abbreviation but not many people know that.
Nobody uses the word “modem” anymore; it isn’t a metaphor that worked its way into general speech.
It’s just a dead word for a dead technology.
It’s just a dead word for a dead technology.
The heck? Modulator/demodulator is still used. In fact, I generally have great success in using it to illustrate the demarcation between LAN and WAN for non techie users.
Your LAN ends at your router. Your WAN begins at your modem. Your modem is the thing the ISP gives that gives you access to the Internet.
While it doesn't do the heavy lifting of converting digital traffic to/from analog signals anymore, it makes a very good nominative identifier for the particular purpose of identifying the piece of hardware that still fulfills the role of enabling connectivity with the world at large.
Your LAN ends at your router. Your WAN begins at your modem. Your modem is the thing the ISP gives that gives you access to the Internet.
While it doesn't do the heavy lifting of converting digital traffic to/from analog signals anymore, it makes a very good nominative identifier for the particular purpose of identifying the piece of hardware that still fulfills the role of enabling connectivity with the world at large.
Yes, but people used to know that “modem” = “those funny noises on your phone line”.
Now laypeople don’t have a “modem”, they just have “that internet box the ISP technician plugged in when I signed up”.
The word modem went out of popular currency too fast for it to ever spawn the kinds of more general metaphors we are talking about in this discussion.
Now laypeople don’t have a “modem”, they just have “that internet box the ISP technician plugged in when I signed up”.
The word modem went out of popular currency too fast for it to ever spawn the kinds of more general metaphors we are talking about in this discussion.
We still have cable-modems in some parts of the world.
Maybe in terms of POTS modems, but otherwise no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_modem
https://www.campbellsci.com.au/sat-inmarsat-bgan
https://www.orbcomm.com/en/hardware/devices/modems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_modem
https://www.campbellsci.com.au/sat-inmarsat-bgan
https://www.orbcomm.com/en/hardware/devices/modems
Dead? That's like calling a transistor a dead technology. They just mostly stopped being their own little boxes. Unless you mean dial-up modems specifically.
Fair enough. I mean dial-up modems of the 1990s used to connect computers to the internet over the phone network by making a local telephone call.
Those were the only type people in the broader public ever knew about. Otherwise, the word “modem” both before and since is just niche technical jargon, ignored by laypeople.
Those were the only type people in the broader public ever knew about. Otherwise, the word “modem” both before and since is just niche technical jargon, ignored by laypeople.
A couple of years ago, I gave a TEDx talk on "how our body understands the digital world", which also picks up the topic of language/tech metaphors:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oXWyfFyWACI
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oXWyfFyWACI
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thanks for technology language easy to help
https://www.alltopinterviewquestions.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor