Since Grant’s useful comment on skeuomorphs, I’ve started keeping my eye out for them. I’m not entirely sure how to characterize the difference between the linguistic and non-linguistic versions of this. Additionally, there is apparently a thing called path dependence, which is common in talk of economics and history/sociology in general, whereby decisions made at some point in time turn out to be non-optimal or non-suitable for some point much later in time, though by that point there’s no way to switch paths. Or, as some people seem to sloganize the concept, “history matters.” This seems like a nice, general concept, perhaps illustrated by my recent difficulties in getting the sysadmins at work to let me use a dvorak keyboard interface (actually, they’ve been very nice about it, but once they had to do maintenance on my machine, and it was a real pain when they didn’t know the key layout; so it’s all on hold for now).
Path dependence may or may not subsume skeuomorphy, though this latter concept seems to be more in the realm of aesthetics, rather than somehow being “stuck” on some path. That is, designers of (say) audio software make the GUI look like a regular stereo interface, knobs and screws and all, to make the experience easier for the user, and also to make the experience more “authentic” (becuase clearly computer software is always a replication of what we used to do without them). It’s all about familiarity. On the other hand, the typical examples of path dependence, like usage of VHS and QWERTY, or the various standards for railway guages, are not about aesthetics, I suppose, and more about the fact that changing is just not very easy. It’s a variation on the “keep things familiar” tune, though in a different domain.
On the other hand, this terminological distinction may simply be…uh, an accident of history, so to speak. In any case, we can always borrow real science terms and talk about “inertia.” Inertia of design features, inertia of symbols, inertia of the familiar.
In any case, a couple of examples I came across yesterday. First, in a (non-new) standup routine Ellen Degeneres commented on the common gesture that people use to get someone to to roll down a car window, namely, miming a circular hand crank. There are two parts to this. First, that gesture is simply carried over from when that was the only way to roll (roll?) down a car window. Second, the new way to lower a window doesn’t involve a very unique or visually salient gesture: you hold down a button. Assuming that it isn’t interpreted as simply pointing downward, there is still the question of disambiguating all of the things that could be accomplished by holding down a button. And even if the only likely thing in context is “roll down your window!”, there’s still factor number one, i.e., there’s already a gesture for that, so this must mean something different.
The second example came when I was watching Star Trek Voyager (one of the very rare good episodes), and the holographic doctor said that he would be ready as soon as he finished “scrubbing,” which appeared to be moving and rubbing one’s hands underneath a dull orange light (which I assume also emits cleansing sound waves, as supposedly the general self-cleaning method in Star Trek is the “sonic shower”). Now, the rubbing was still there, so perhaps scrub is not so much of an anachronism. But if it were simply moving one’s hands underneath the cleaner, it probably would be. I’d guess that the choice of that word was quite conscious, in order to show the viewer how certain mundane things change over the centuries. The significance might have been lost if the doctor had just said “I’ll be there after I finish disinfecting/cleaning/sanitizing my hands”. (Uh, and let’s ignore the fact that this shouldn’t really be necessary, given he’s a hologram: he could just disappear and then come back, presumably all cleaned up)
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