More Modern Fossils

Heartless Machine [via Next Nature]

1. [David Rose]

   3.5″ floppy disks are hardly modern…

2. [O_M]

   …So much for claims of biodegradable plastic!

3. [laymusic]

   I heard a lecture once by Charles Rosen. He said that in the mid-nineteenth century there was a fad for ruins, and architects who were designing a building (say, a bank) had to submit the usual drawings of what it would look like after it was built, but also ones of what it would look like several hundred years later when it had fallen into picturesque ruins.

4. [Judas Gutenberg]

   I actually try to make my modern house improvements look like they are ancient relics of a pre-existing structure scraped away and repurposed (an architectural palimpset). I haven’t gone quite as overboard with my technological stuff, although I am trying to figure out how to make a modern computer look more like one of Babbage’s Difference Engine.

5. [Judas Gutenberg]

   I actually try to make my modern house improvements look like they are ancient relics of a pre-existing structure scraped away and repurposed (an architectural palimpset). I haven’t gone quite as overboard with my technological stuff, although I am trying to figure out how to make a modern computer look more like one of Babbage’s Difference Engines.

6. [Anon Y Mous]

   @7: The word “floppy” refers to the flexibility of the media – as opposed to the inflexible metal platter of a “hard disk”. So the 8″, 5.25″, and the 3.5″ disks are all considered “floppy disks”.

7. [Anonymous]

   @David Rose: 3,5″ disks are not FLOPPY disks. The name “Floppy disk” belongs to the 8″ and 5,25″ versions. 3,5″ are called “diskettes” since they were “so much smaller” than 5.25″ disks.
   People who call 3.5″ diskettes “floppy disks” are usually born after 1980.

8. [Chris]

   @7 incorrect – I was born in 1972 and throughout my life, everyone referred to 3.5″ diskettes as “floppies” – because that actual storage media itself is “floppy”.

9. [snooksmcdermott]

   Dang. I had this idea 4 years ago:
   Fossils of the Technocene.