I wonder sometimes what would be the oldest extant word based on technology no longer in use. Taping an interview? Dialing someone? https://twitter.com/hels/status/679059633949011970 …
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Replying to @mwichary
Font is a good one, late 17th century. Still used for selling type, but several generations of obsolete tech later. In general there are a lot of words from printing, which makes sense, considering that printers preserved the written word, so their terminology survived.
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Replying to @kimaboe
But font feels like it doesn’t count because fonts still exist. They’re just a different/more modern version of the same idea. But I bet there must have been a device used for typesetting that’s no longer there, immortalized in some term…
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Replying to @mwichary
Oh, for sure, Adobe software is full of them, 'leading', 'slug' and 'kerning' comes to mind.
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Replying to @kimaboe
Lead still exists. :·) Kerning was not a technology, though, right? Just a term? Slug feels the closest, except it’s not really in common use. Aah, this will drive me mad now.
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Replying to @mwichary
Lead still exists, but leading is a specific product/tool used in typesetting, that is now obsolete and commercially unavailable. Kerning is a technique, grinding away at the letters using precise tools, whereas the software version achieves the effect using a different method :p
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Replying to @kimaboe
Sure! But both seem far from my original tweet. :·)
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Nah. What is different with kerning and font compared to backspace and shift? They are still around today and do the same thing with different technological means.
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I agree that shift and backspace and dashboard went against my own rules. It’s a tricky area to navigate.
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I think maybe the difference I felt was in the evolution? Dashboards today feel very different than original dashboards. Fonts and tablets don’t at all somehow? It’s perplexing and impossible (and pointless) to quantify. What wins in the end is what *feels* like a good story. :·)
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(Which I’m sort of coming to terms with while writing my book!)
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