We reached the point (some time ago) where the save icon being a floppy disk makes absolutely no sense to anyone born after a certain time. We could choose a more modern media format and use an icon of that instead, but we would run into the same problem once that media becomes obsolete.
What is a good icon for the function of saving something that can easily be understood by anyone regardless of language or the march of time?
Edit: I know it’s not really an answerable question and is hard but the question is what would you come up with if tasks to design an icon. Given the constraints of the question, what are your best shots at coming up with something that fills the requirements and why do you thing it would work?
Floppy disk. Fight me.
Agreed. It’s the tried and true icon.
It’s like on discord, what’s the symbol to make a call? An old school telephone handset. People know what it means. It’s a universal symbol
People have stopped recognizing it as a disk (which is good because that meaning was always pretty confusing in terms of saving vs loading) it is now the save symbol and will continue to be the save symbol centuries after the last floppy disk has crumbled into ash.
Similarly, the folder icon has now been enshrined as load.
Why is the disk save and the folder load? It’s completely fucking arbitrary, both worked just as well for each context. But someone somewhere (probably in the MSFT internationalization and standards team tbh) made that choice once and thus it is that forever.
Yeah there is no reason at this point to change it as we just teach people that the floppy disk means save. I was wondering if we could come up with something that the user, at a glance, would generally identify as saving. What would that glyph look like. In other words, the arbitrary and established icon is what it is but with hindsight and thinking ahead what would be a better icon we could design. One that would convey “save” to the most people the first time they see it.
I think the flopy disk symbol will stay the universal safe button. Maybe nobody will know the floppy disk anymore, just everybody knowing its the safe button
The act of loading necessitates a selection, so the folder makes more sense.
No more so than saving. Either saving and loading use free filesystem browsing interfaces, slots that are embedded into a single file/non-descreet location on disk, or they save into a limited scope of files/folders on disk. The last system seems to be the most common in modern UX within non-compatible apps with the first system being preferred for apps dealing with common files (like a text editor).
Also, there is a whole thing with Save As vs. Save - though with a new file/profile/whatever Save can often trigger a Save As action.
Most saving is done on files that already exist.
That’s a fair answer. There is nothing saying the floppy disk can’t work. By sticking with a symbol that has no actual bearing on function (from the perspective of the future people) you’ve abstracted the concept of saving away from natural language. However, you still place a computational burden on those future people/aliens/whatever where they need to be taught what that icon means.
don’t change the floppy :( once nobody speaks of it, it truly dies
Not quite dead yet. This seismic survey ship I was 9n fairly recently… we had generated the navigational data, and needed to feed it into the ships autopilot. This was done via floppy.
Yes, it was a relatively old ship (late 90’s, I think), but there are plenty older ones around. And even when refurbishing a ship, they often leave the autopilot alone.
Yeah I probably should have qualified that with, “unless you’re a municipal/city/state transportation system or in maritime.”
Or pretty much anywhere in the manufacturing sector.
Plenty of products you use on a daily basis, especially processed foods, are being cranked out on equipment controlled by PLC’s from the 1980’s or earlier.
Don’t worry, your wife still will.
How are there so many people ITT who genuinely don’t even understand what OP is asking and are arguing about something else completely that they thought up in their head like whether we should do away with the floppy icon because it confuses people now or if their youngsters know what a floppy is or if they do or if there’s a better icon to us now that can represent saving.
None of those are anything to do with OP really.
What OP is asking is if in 10000 years the next human civilization after our collapse that has no concept of computers and probably no electricity or industry nor potentially any grasp on our language or alphabet stumbles upon a functioning computer from our civilization, how do we tell them which button is the save button, when all shared symbolic context has been lost?
Consider the same question but for radioactive waste, how do we ward off potential future pre-industrial human civilizations from our nuclear waste sites to stop them dying to radiation poisoning for possibly tens of thousands of years until they develop an understanding of radiation and the equipment to measure it? Well, something like this maybe:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
Though maybe given this thread, we should instead be considering how to convey very simple abstract questions to the pre-industrial people on lemmy.world instead, especially when it appears they have only a rudimentary, GPT2-esque grasp on language.
I am also very perplexed by the responses in this whole thread. These are very basic drills that are also done in design based classes. It’s just a thought experiment.
This is not a place of honor, no honored dead is interred here.
Now I want to see the original sign.
Thanks!
I was gonna fight you because “or if there’s a better icon to us now that can represent saving.” Is a reasonable interpretation of what OP said.
But then I continued to read more comments and wow people just like… Explaining the floppy disk is wild.
k
I’ve noticed youngsters where I work sometimes no longer know what “saving a document is”, as they only know google doc style sync.
So I’d go with a send button: send to harddrive. Usually represented with an triangle/arrow.
Send/share buttons are already a fucking mess though
We’ll see the problem with this is symbols are inherently contextual to culture
Probably something like this. Seems self-explanatory to me at least.
I assumed it’s sinister for left turn but then I got confused why L was turning right (is L supposed to be for leave?)
Save and Load (?)
For English speakers I could see this working, but I imagine the letters would have to change per language which would be suboptimal.
We should just start manufacturing NVME drives to look like floppy disks.
I feel like the shape mostly doesn’t matter, as most people will never see or physically interact with an NVME drive. It’s just “the files are inside the computer.”
It won’t solve anything, but we should do it for fun, though.
Assuming people still know what a folder is, the most obvious would be a folder with an arrow going into it, like:
or
I know I’m wrong for thinking this but it looks too much like open to me.
Are you going for just updating? If so, I’d leave it alone. Culturally it’s ubiquitous and doesn’t require changing.
If you’re thinking more along the lines of a save version of the whole “how do we ensure future people know nuclear waste resides within” then you’re gonna run into the same problems they do, symbols change meaning over time. But if I had to pick something that may be obvious to most people, my vote is a scribe and a pen. Most cultures have writing, most cultures with writing save information by writing it down. There are problems, obviously, but if you gotta pick one, that’s my vote until I hear a better suggestion.
And for what it’s worth, with the nuclear waste sitch, my vote first the atomic priesthood
GTA2 save point.
“Halleluja, another soul saved”!
Spot on 😁
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lmao, well done!
What are you doing when you save something? You’re keeping it in its current state, held in stasis, to be retrieved later. Maybe using freezing imagery (like a snowflake) could get that concept across, and it would retain its meaning over time.
Another way to think of saving is storage - putting something in a convenient location for later access. A safe might be a useful image, but it implies security. Other types of storage devices seem too likely to change with time. Maybe a pocket? If there was a way to graphically represent putting something in your pocket that would be a fairly universal and durable image.
Your second sentence makes me think an equal sign would be appropriate.
An equation does not need to be identical on both sides, just equal in value.
Also both sides don’t need to be unchanged. In fact mostly they don’t.
= does not convey persistence in any way for me (& I guess most people).
This is how ancient Egyptians prepared their dead
Interesting concept, attempting to indicate something entering the brain/head/statefulness. I wonder if we could generalize it further so that race of underground mole-people would understand it as well (e.g. not a species-specific head).
Uplifting my mood
I’m pressing it.
“Upload to Wetware”
The cloud is someone else’s brain?
I like it! No need to know the language or anything. Things collect in basins like rain in bowl-shaped rocks so even without our current level of technology it would still have some indication of saving/gathering.
Thanks. Maybe a bit cryptic. Maybe add a couple dots to indicate stuff is being added and removed?
And is there any way to underline the fact that it’s MY bowl that’s being taken from and added to? Is it necessary? I dunno. Mulling required.
To me it’s a bit too much like download/upload. Though I guess depending on the context that’s sort of like load/save.
Or just the hard drive by itself. Is a platter drive old fashioned these days?
Also a safe would be a decent choice.
Why do you want to move a piece of paper onto an old style record player?
I mean I’m in my 40s now, but we still have spread sheets, Word documents, and web pages don’t we?
And I think everyone still knows hard drives are at least a thing? I can buy people in their early 30 or under never used a floppy, but we’ve all used some form of hard disk.
Also, I noticed no argument of the safe suggestion, and I hazard a guess many fewer of us have used an actual safe than a hard disk, especially a safe with a big swinging lock, but I think the majority could get the intent of putting something in a safe. Perhaps an open safe with an arrow going in if we want to be grandiose about it? 😉
A safe would make more sense for an encrypted partition or directory
How about something like that? Symbolises data to device.
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Yeah, I just used what icon was handy. I mean if you were to do a more serious attempt,I’d draw it more like a concrete box, myself. Or more specifically concrete slots that line up with the numbers, driving home the point that it is a more permanent solution.
This is what I was thinking of, but no binary and just a square cardboard box with the flaps open.
Just an arrow pointing into a box.
I think this assumes no knowledge and transcends culture and tech.
Maybe it’s just me but this looks like we’re putting it somewhere to forget. Like junk lol
