Happy April
I thought we’d have some fun comparing our automatic understanding of words in the technological age we now live in with that of a world less than a generation ago.
Here are just twenty meanings of words twenty years ago, back in the latter half of the 1980s:
- An application was for employment
- A programme was a television show
- Spam was meat
- Windows were something you hated to clean
- A keyboard was part of a musical instrument
- When you clicked it meant you got on with someone
- A cursor used profanity
- A sand box was something your kids played in
- Memory was something you lost with age
- Navigation was the territory of trained pilots
- Compress was something you did to rubbish
- If you unzipped in public you went to jail
- Log on was adding wood to a fire
- A hard drive was a long trip on the road
- A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
- Post was something you got through your letter box
- A back up was something nasty that happened to your toilet
- You cut with scissors and pasted with glue
- A web was a spider’s home
- And a virus was the ‘flu
I shared these thoughts with some people and got the following additional gems:
Monitors were in class rooms
A mobile was used to amuse a baby
Wireless was something you listened to The Archers on
GUI was the consistency of syrup
Broadband was something John McEnroe wore
Excel was a verb
E was an additive
You practiced Latin in a forum
Please join in and share any extra ones with us that you come up with…
And, as we head towards another festive holiday, happy Easter to everyone.