We still tape things on VCRs (yes, people actually still use VCRs, believe it or not,) and we still talk about things like “celebrity sex tapes” or whatever. Even if something was recorded with a digital video camera, people still refer to it as a “tape.” The word still clings to its original meaning of a video recording, even though actual videotapes are becoming rare, and it has also come to apply to things which are recorded digitally, as I said before.
The question is, is that usage going to stick for good? Or is some other word going to take its place?
In 50 years, when nobody EVER uses actual videotapes anymore, are people still going to be talking about “tape”?
Quite possibly. Lots of words hang on in usages like this, long after the original connection has been obsoleted or become purely metaphorical (of course, the original meaning of “tape” wasn’t specifically “video recording (on a magnetic ribbon)”, but, well, tape; a long narrow strip of whatever). For example, we still speak of dialing a phone (as pointed out above), posting to a message board, send carbon copies of e-mails, cut and paste, place file folders on our desktop, and so on.
Probably until the generation that used to “tape” things dies off. I’m 38, so perhaps it will be another 40 or so years. I can’t stop saying things like “sound like a broken record” and “wicked cool”.
I saw this logo on the side of a commercial van this morning. It’s anachronism made me smile – how long before most people don’t even know what it is supposed to represent? I’m guessing that even most AV Club nerds that graduated within the past ten years wouldn’t have any common experience to relate it to.
Ya never know. When’s the last time anyone used an actual stock ticker? Yet, that’s still what they call those numbers running across the bottom of the screen on CNN. Hell, I still hear people talking about how they “filmed” something even though they’ve been using a camcorder for 25 years.
I’m 19 and I still remember taping things when I was little (actually, I probably still did on occasion Not 7 years ago so some kids who are younger yet may be familiar), we have a lot longer than that unless there’s a particularly extreme counter-culture rebellion against the lingo 40 years from now.
I give up, what is it? If you squint and turn your head a little it sort of looks like film exchanging between two reels (as in a projector, or even a cassette or VHS if you want to get technical), or rather the little spinny whirly… thingies that are used to facilitate the transfer on larger projectors at any rate, but I’m probably wrong judging by your phrasing.
I lived through the tape era (both video and audio cassette, but not reel-to-reel) and I stopped using the word several years ago. I can’t even recall the last time I heard anyone use tape to mean “record”. If somebody asked if they could tape me, I would think of masking or duct tape for a brief moment, before realizing what they were trying to say.
This question pops up all the time here. It’s almost like a … broken record.
(Personally I like how they still use the sound of a record being interrupted in commercials and whatnot–that “brrrzzzzzzwwwwzzzrrrp!” sound. I figure very few people under 20 have ever heard that live.)
They also still often put VCR-style “rewind lines” on footage being played backwards, which I suppose will soon enough make no sense to young’uns either.
Also, people I know who couldn’t pick a record out of a lineup know that the sound of a needle screeching off a record means, “something unexpected has brought an abrupt halt to what would normally be expected.”
They all recognize the sound and what it means- they just have no idea why.
“Tape” will very quickly become obsolete, just like the phrase “lock, stock, and barrel” went out of use after muskets became obsolete in the late 1800s (along with the phrase “don’t go off half cocked”), and “clockwise” disappeared after clocks went digital, and “clicker” stopped being used after the 1970s era remote controls stopped clicking, “icebox” went out of use when they stopped literally being boxes with ice in them, and, uh, oh wait…
Yeah. And they also still often put VCR-style “rewind lines” on footage being played backwards, which I suppose will soon enough make no sense to young’uns either.
In addition to this, I have noticed that people I know who couldn’t pick a record out of a lineup know that the sound of a needle screeching off a record means, “something unexpected has brought an abrupt halt to what would normally be expected.”
They all recognize the sound and what it means- they just have no idea why.
What is it supposed to represent? I work with 16mm film, VHS tapes & BetaSP tapes every day in my line of work and I would not have made the connection that that logo is a reel of film. It just looks like a stylized “S” for Sharp’s.
The verb “to tape” gained the meaning of “to record” when we started being able to record audio, video, and digital data to tape. That is, “tape” and “record” are now synonyms. That meaning of the word “tape” will not go away just because we no longer actually use tape for the recordings.
On a slightly related note, I remember that in the early 80s my friends would call videogame cartridges “tapes”. That usage did not stick (I’ve never heard anyone call a CD a “tape”), but that’s not a counterpoint to my argument - it only shows that my friends were dumb. I actually had to open up a cartridge to show them that there was no tape in them.
Recal that early video game cartridges looked a lot like 8-track tape cartridges which were well established at the time and which were inserted into the player in similar fashion.
Also, the word “cartridge” wasn’t much used in those days, except in connection with 8 tracks. So when the game device was named “cartridge”, a lot of people wrongly assumed that implied more similarity than it did.
The concept of tape is very attractive for dense storage. As tape improves, its long range usefulness increases, not decreases. But it will be attractive for only the most massive data requirements. Yet, our appetite for increasing data is well known. Right now, due to the novelty, people will gladly watch on a phone in tiny bad resolution the same ball game they will not watch at home if their HDTV is busy doing other things. No way will they TiVo it in regular mode.
But soon enough we will be beyond that thinking, and want to download iMax movies for storage on the shelf.
I worked with a guy just last year who constantly called CDs “tapes”. (He was in his early 50s, about 10 years older than me.)
How about “album”? That’s been a misnomer for decades; as I discovered at my grandparents’ house years ago, the original “record albums” were exactly that: several 78 RPM records with 2-4 songs on each disc, collected into a book-like container with each “page” being a paper sleeve holding a single record. In other words, it was like a photo album, but with records instead of photos. The “album” was eventually replaced by the “long-playing record”, or “LP”, but people continued to say “album”. I very rarely hear “album” any more, though — I hear, “So-and-so has a new CD out” more often than “So-and-so has a new album out”. Maybe “tape” will disappear once music starts being widely commercially released on digital chips for players with no moving parts (basically a chip you plug into an iPod-like device).
