by Din » Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:54 am
Petr, a telephone was a method of voice communication alone. You used a telephone (Greek: "distant hearing") to speak to someone and, initially, you got connected via a switchboard. Later, you had a unique numerical code ("phone number"). But, the point is that a telephone allowed only vocal communication. You certainly could not use it as a calculator, a device to watch television or movies, it was not a device for accessing data from distant and different telephones. It was a big black box with a dial and ten numbers.
Now, most people use a "cell phone" mostly for internet searches, watching media, downloading data etc. In fact, using it as an actual voice communication device is probably about 20% or less for most people. A friend of mine was watching her son text his girlfriend. She said, "Why don't you just call her?", to which the son gave her a withering look! No one seems to even use it as a telephone anymore, they just text.
So, if you went back to your grandfather's time, and someone asked to use your phone, and you gave him your cell phone, I suspect the first thing they'd say is, "That's not a phone".
The point is that any word, especially in the tech regime, has changed it's meaning so much by popular usage, that the original meaning/function is completely lost. Today, I suspect that most people under twenty do not know (or understand) how to set an f number on a camera, or even, perhaps, what a camera is, besides a "cell phone"! Traditional holographers today may get mad that these new imaging methods are being called "holograms". In about two generations from now, our grandchildren will probably generate a 3D image floating in space and capable of being transmitted from a "cell phone", and call that a hologram.
lobaz wrote:
P.S. Talking about weird words, to me the weirdest is a 'bus'. It is in fact just a Latin suffix!
And, in fact, the suffix has become the word itself. Originally, it was called an "omnibus", then it became "motorbus"
Petr, a telephone was a method of voice communication alone. You used a telephone (Greek: "distant hearing") to speak to someone and, initially, you got connected via a switchboard. Later, you had a unique numerical code ("phone number"). But, the point is that a telephone allowed only vocal communication. You certainly could not use it as a calculator, a device to watch television or movies, it was not a device for accessing data from distant and different telephones. It was a big black box with a dial and ten numbers.
Now, most people use a "cell phone" mostly for internet searches, watching media, downloading data etc. In fact, using it as an actual voice communication device is probably about 20% or less for most people. A friend of mine was watching her son text his girlfriend. She said, "Why don't you just call her?", to which the son gave her a withering look! No one seems to even use it as a telephone anymore, they just text.
So, if you went back to your grandfather's time, and someone asked to use your phone, and you gave him your cell phone, I suspect the first thing they'd say is, "That's not a phone".
The point is that any word, especially in the tech regime, has changed it's meaning so much by popular usage, that the original meaning/function is completely lost. Today, I suspect that most people under twenty do not know (or understand) how to set an f number on a camera, or even, perhaps, what a camera is, besides a "cell phone"! Traditional holographers today may get mad that these new imaging methods are being called "holograms". In about two generations from now, our grandchildren will probably generate a 3D image floating in space and capable of being transmitted from a "cell phone", and call that a hologram.
[quote="lobaz"]
P.S. Talking about weird words, to me the weirdest is a 'bus'. It is in fact just a Latin suffix![/quote]
And, in fact, the suffix has become the word itself. Originally, it was called an "omnibus", then it became "motorbus"