Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives. Still, they get it. Some icons outlive their era, some don’t.

> In the 90s everybody knew how a paper book worked

I hope that’s still the case!

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asddubs 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I guess even with the physical buttons you had to just learn that triangle means play and twin towers means pause

	▲	jodrellblank 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I guess even without the physical buttons you had to just learn that "play" means "engage the appropriate technical machinery". > "[play] The meaning "to cause (a recording) to reproduce what is on it" is by 1903, probably from the "make music" sense." - https://www.etymonline.com/word/play

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thaumasiotes 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Did it though? Most people young today probably never pressed a physical play/pause/stop button in their lives.

It's hard to call this an example of "skeuomorphism". Those icons were introduced on physical buttons with a certain meaning that everybody had to learn. They have exactly the same meaning on software buttons; the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them.

This isn't a case of the software appealing to a visual metaphor that made non-metaphorical sense before the software. It was just as much of a metaphor originally as it is now. You might as well call the word "edit" a skeuomorphism in modern software because past software also had "edit" menus.

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andyroid 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> the interaction that people have with them now is the same interaction that everybody has always had with them

Right, that was my point. What does it matter what a diskette used to be? Unless something more obvious to convey storage/saving comes along, it’s hardly “crashing down” anytime soon.

	▲	thaumasiotes 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The disk icon is skeuomorphic because it's a picture of storage media. That has now gone obsolete and, instead of being skeuomorphic, it's vestigial. Play and pause icons aren't skeuomorphic. They're symbolic. There is no point at which they were a reference to some phenomenon earlier than or other than themselves.