Redefining

Something that's come up in our blog posts and conversations, both implicitly and explicitly, and was a big underlying theme in this week's readings, is how we're redefining (repurposing?) words and concepts in the age of the internet. "Identity," "status," "networking," etc. etc. have all developed new connotations (meanings?) when called up by ICTs. And while we're struggling to make sense of what these words mean—or what we mean when we use them, since a new usage usually comes before a new definition—it makes me wonder what our revisions are leaving behind.

The Floppy Disk means Save, and 14 other old people Icons that don't make sense anymore [LINK]

I'm thinking about the many symbols that are a common part of our current visual lexicon that, for all intents and purposes, have no literal representation left anymore (see the link above for a sample). Their meaning is entirely new, especially for people who never knew any other usage, because the thing that inspired the image doesn't exist anymore. But while this one-to-one replacement seems innocuous (especially when we can convince ourselves the new meaning isn't far off from the old), there is a danger in forgetting. The history of the symbol becomes invisible, ignored; the messiness of the change is mopped up. To me, the readings this week represent the messiness—the struggle to make sense of the revision, to process the change as it happens. The clarifying work is the interesting part, not the end result.