Ah, so it sings in harmony?
Yeah, Shadowrun has one of the most interesting fictional worlds I’ve run across. Makes me wonder how much longer until we start to get unobtrusive non-awkward augmented-reality systems, and whether they’ll be full of ads too. (Wasn’t there a minor character in The Diamond Age who was driven insane by malware spouting ads 24/7 on the inside of his corneas?)
yeah - I like that -
I call mine my ‘communicator’ - too bad with the advent of smart phones the flip phones have become antiques.
Reminds me of Fritz Leiber’s “The Creature from Cleveland Depths” published in Galaxy back in 1962. Wherein they were called “ticklers.”
I think they will be called phones for a long long time. The word “phone” will just mean any handheld device that does what a smart phone does.
I predict that we’ll call them a “Telecommunicator”.
Eh? Eh? It’s a work in progress.
I have been looking for a Bluetooth device so I can take calls when on the ski lift or skiing ( lots of work is done from the home office, aka ski mountain), but damnit I think I need one of those hanging on my jacket with the phone safely tucked away inside.
Author Gary Shteyngart calls them “apparats” in his near-future novel Super Sad True Love Story.
Possibly never. They’re still calling Aids a “syndrome,” that’s what the S stands for. A syndrome has no discernible cause. They can only diagnose it from the symptoms once everything else has been ruled out. Aids was originally diagnosed from the symptoms after ruling everything else out. It’s actually not a syndrome anymore, it has a specific cause, HIV, but the name has stuck as a misnomer thanks to the press.
Thanks. That’s the other thing this thread reminded me of, but I couldn’t recall the title.
The word “phone” will last forever. But it will be used only for the most common type of phone --i.e. the hand-held smartphone.
What will change is the word we use for the old fashioned devices.
Sort of the way that the word “mail” as changed. It now means email, and if you want to talk about the old-fashioned type, you have to use a newer term: snail mail.
The language for old phones is already morphing: to the term “landline”.
Right now, most people use the word landline to mean the number you dial. But soon, “landline” will also mean the physical instrument that sits on your desk.
That’s a really good point I think.
I also hear “hardline” being used to refer to old-school landlines, although admittedly mainly in the context of police/espionage/military use in TV programmes and films.
That must be a regional thing. Most folks I deal with, mail can either be snail mail or e-mail depending on context. Nobody goes to the Post Office to pick up their email, and nobody needs to log onto a computer to get a post card.
Have you ever heard someone say “snail mail” in a non-joking way? Because “snail mail” is a phrase I’ve never heard spoken out loud unless the speaker was making an obvious joke.
I’ve used “snail mail” in a non-joking manner. Heard it used by others too.
We will never stop calling them phones. 
I dunno know… I’m still waiting on the term “ice cubes” to die out
Because ice is… round… now? Help me out here.
Justin Bailey:
Well, the ice pieces produced by most automatic icemakers isn’t really cubic, maybe? I know my freezer makes sort of a rectangular prism that’s rounded on one side, sort of the shape of a canoe. The ice dispenser at my local 7-11 produces short cylinders - I guess they’re sort of close to cubic, but the shape is more gumdrop-like. The icemaker at the summer camp my kids go to produces little square “pillows” of ice, like the shape of ravioli.
It’s nit-picking - the ice-machine-makers probably start with a cube as their ideal and then adjust the shape to make the machine dispense better - but it does seem that nowadays, we refer to any not-randomly-shaped (i.e., as opposed to crushed or chipped) piece of ice as a cube.
Eh, ice trays still produce more-or-less cube-shaped (well, I’ve got one that produces Han Solo-shaped ones, but I digress) hunks of ice, and there’s not really a better name available. Ice Hexahedrons? Ice Chunks? Ice Things?
We still “dial” a number and it “rings”, even though few of us have rotary-dials and phones with bells inside.