Why we can't stop using old-fashioned symbols

My 6-year old son came to me with a folded pillow in his arms saying, "look it's an email!"

As technology becomes more abstract we increasingly rely on physical objects, which are almost always just older tech, to symbolize these intangible ideas.

An auditory anachronism: When your phone takes a picture (or even a screenshot) you hear a shutter sound even though there's no actual shutter mechanism inside the phone

The magnifying glass is interesting because it's often used as the symbol for search but also used, generally with a + or - symbol added to it, as the symbol for zoom in and zoom out within the same overall user interface. We're using the same anachronistic symbol for two very different things within the same context and seem to have no problem with that.

I've noticed this with sound as well. Teen sitcoms still use recordings of actual bells in school, even though most modern high schools use electronic chimes, since the sound of a school bell is more specific than a generic square wave that could mean your laundry is done.

Another visual anachronism I can think of is the Atari 2600 joystick to represent "gaming" as a whole. Even when I was a kid (I was born in 1998), you would see this Atari-style controller on the now cringy gamer t-shirts that every edgy middle schooler would wear. However more recently, you might see visual representations of gaming as a more PS1-ish style controller, which is still something most kids nowadays have probably only ever seen in pictures. And on the topic of updating these symbols, a new one in the last couple years is appearing on "No Smoking" signage. The whisp of smoke on the old signs is being changed to a stylized lightning bolt, to represent electronic cigarettes. It's interesting, because this symbol looks absolutely nothing like most actual vapes, but vape designs change like the wind, so naturally they had to come up with a standard and recognizable symbol. But good luck stopping people from getting their nic fix in the movie theater when it smells like blueberries instead of an old bowling alley.

In modern TV shows, whenever a character records something on their webcam or phone, there's still the old recording icons from the camcorder days stamped on the film when they play it back. Also whenever a show / youtuber wants to show what's happened in a previous episode they'll make the previous episodes footage greyer to show its old or decayed from time even though it was shot on HD.

The "paint-bucket" tool makes more sense if you somehow already know it's called the Fill Tool. I always pictured dumping a paint bucket out into the shape, and having it flow out to the edges.

What's even stranger is that now in the era of streaming services we not only refer to them as TV and radio but even the awards shows like the Emmys consider Netflix to be "Television", even though Netflix does not have any relationship to any national or local television stations or even any cable channels. Spotify has "radio stations" but again, they have nothing to do with transmitting any content over radio waves or any station affiliates. Culturally we've gotten used to the idea that "music / audio content" is "radio" and "short form series / video content" is "television"

Went to a martini tasting the other day and the guy running the seminar pointed out that nowadays a martini is considered anything in that glass, and separately pointed out that martini glasses are seen as a status symbol. I got to thinking about how even Apple maps uses a pint of beer for a dive-bar but a martini glass with an olive in it for more high-end drinking establishments

I think some of these are just more distinct than their modern counterparts. A cell phone is just a cubed rectangle. While an old style phone can't really be mistaken for much else.

I’m actually learning American sign language right now and this video made me realize just how many common signs for nouns come from these anachronistic symbols. For example, the sign for campfire is looks like an old-fashioned triangular tent, and the sign for video/movie/film looks like you’re cranking an old video camera. Come to think of it, even basic signs are similarly anachronistic. Like the sign for boy is supposed to represent a baseball cap, and the sign for girl implies a bonnet ribbon. I suppose it kinda makes sense since ASL wasn’t really invented until the early 20th century, and didn’t really form into what it is today until the 70s and 80s, but it’s still interesting.

Another visual anachronism I can think of is using head mirrors to represent doctors. They used to be in a lot of cartoons, including Spongebob Squarepants (google spongebob doctor and you'll see what I'm talking about) and head mirrors were actually quite commonly used to examine a person's ear, nose, and throat. These days though, doctors usually use pen lights or head lamps instead for the same purpose.

Perhaps there is something to be said about how we always use crowns for royalty even though a) nowadays crowns/tiaras can be worn and owned by anyone, b) royals rarely wear their crowns and c) the images we use for crowns are almost always modeled after the English crown with the fur and velvet or are fantastical takes on medieval crowns but the symbol can stand for any king or queen

The symbol for an atom ⚛ is kind of an example of anachronism. However this might be down to necessity because our modern idea of what an atom "looks" like is hard to symbolise

A sorta two-step anachronism I always like bringing up is "dashboard." Horse-drawn carriages had a literal board in front of the driver to keep the horse from kicking dash up at them. Motor cars had something in the same spot so it got called a dashboard. We started putting all the guages and dials on car dashboards. Now phones, computers, and applications may have a screen with various metrics and settings on it called a "dashboard."

In the UK and many other countries, road signs are incredibly anachronistic. E.g. the symbol for a speed camera a Victorian style camera box, despite the speed camera itself being invented almost a century after anyone ever used one. Similarly, the symbol for train crossing is still an old fashioned steam train. Even more interesting is the ‘post horn’ symbol used for post offices around the world which haven’t been used for absolutely ages. The list goes on.

I like how they still use anachronistic sounds in commercials and TV shows, like for photography the sound of a 35mm film camera with a motorized film winder or to depict a sudden drastic ending to something with the sound of needle scratching a vinyl record.

It goes for gestures too: how about when you want to ask someone to roll down their car window, you'd still motion a spinning, manual knob, rather than a button?

Makes me also think about how the world of emoticons or "emoji" have contributed and evolved with visual anachronisms -- and how those affect our perception of those concepts. Like how the emoji for a school building always seems to have a large clock tower, despite me never having one at any of the schools I went to growing up. Or how honey pots are still present, despite my meager efforts of research telling me that the only time the two were related in history were in Ancient Egypt