this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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It’s only universally recognized because of precedent. The true challenge is to create something that can be understood by someone that has no background with computers (or whatever)
Like the radiation ☢️ thing, danger ⚠️ , are supposed to be examples of this. Radiation more so because it’s not supposed to rely on language even
Now excuse me while I press the call button on my phone which is shaped like a landline handset from 30 years ago
For sure, but it doesn't actually matter whether it's abstract from the outset or has become abstract through technological advance so long as it's unique and understood. Someone who's never seen a floppy disk will still learn it quickly, because it's distinctive.
But what if we go extinct and computers remain functional? will aliens that discover our planet be able to save their documents? Did you think about that??
I've said it ~~once~~ zero times and I'll say it again. Far-future hypothetical space aliens should RTFM.
.not_porn
Looks like a Switch cartridge as well, so no, that’s gonna be lost soon.
By that argument, it looks like an SD card.
I'd argue that the ~~insanely satisfying stim toy~~ shutter of the floppy keeps it unique, though.
How is the nuclear sign in any way universally understandable? It is properly by learning it's meaning.
It's intended to visually represent an atom with radiation emitting away from it.
It's not "univeral" in the sense that anyone could understand it, but in the sense that anyone who knows about what radiation is would have a clue - be them people now, or some far-future civilisation stumbling across a nuclear dump site, or aliens. It's a depiction of what is going on.
The symbol also uses elements of graphic design that make it feel unwelcoming and hostile even if you have no understanding at all. It's a design that clearly telegraphs "this is not a good thing"
Similar for the biohazard sign, which in its strange curves and spines looks almost "mutated"
I respect all the science and research in hostile design, but then I rember the chilli peppers, just trying to keep safe from mamals by simulating the feeling of fire in their mouths...
Evolution doesn't really work that way though. Peppers didn't evolve spiciness to keep animals away, they essentially randomly developed a mutation that made them unpalatable to most animals, and that increased their odds of survival. It's not doing X for Y reason, it's X happening with Y as a consequence.
The design process is actually very interesting to read about and the intentionality (whether you think it’s effective or not) is essentially the scenario that if someone were to stumble across it in 10,000 years they would recognize it is dangerous and leave it alone
That said you are probably right given there already have been a few notable incidents where people have broken into discarded medical equipment and stolen radioactive sources, poisoning dozens of people in the process
It's interesting how that precedent happened though.
30 years ago saving something basically involved taking a floppy, putting it into the floppy drive, and then hitting a "save" button. That was often because computers didn't even have a hard drive. And, when they did have a hard drive, having your files on a floppy drive was basically the only way to get them onto another computer. So, because of that, a floppy drive was pretty universally recognized as a place where you saved files.
In the time since then, saving to a hard drive became more common. But, it's hard to use a hard drive as an image for "save" because only computer geeks know what a hard drive actually looks like. Even if you could get people to recognize a hard drive icon it's also ambiguous because you use your hard drive for many other things other than saving. Finally, it's also less necessary to put the save files on external media, because you can email them, upload them, save to the cloud, etc.
The only physical media where people still save things is USB thumb drives. So, you could put in an image of a USB thumb drive, which more people would recognize, but that's more ambiguous because people only save files to a thumb drive in certain specific cases. It's also harder because there's not really a globally recognized thumb drive image. All floppy drives had to look more or less identical because of the constraints of the disk drive system. But, USB drives only have to have the USB part in common -- and in some cases that's hideable or retractable.
You can make calls on your phone. I gotta text my friends this