Do you have a floppy drive? No? When was the last time you used a floppy? My daughter used floppies on occasion to get work from home to school, but now she is using a thumb drive. Most of us see a floppy disk as a leftover from the computer days of yesteryear. And in computer days, yesteryear comes pretty quick.

So, with the floppy quickly becoming as remote as the 5.25 inch floppy, or cassette loader to us, why is a floppy the icon for “Saving” on so many pieces of software? And will it continue on until the only floppies are in museums?

This is already happening in another common, but overlooked place: you car dashboard. Do you have an ashtray in your car? Lighter? No? But I bet you have a cell phone charger and it has a plug on it that is the size of a cucumber. Why? Because it fits the cigarette lighter hole that is still there even though no one uses a cigarette lighter in the car or even has an ashtray! That big ol’ hole will likely remain in your dash for decades. In 50 years, no one on Earth will smoke and we’ll have hover craft to zip around in running on cold fusion and there will still be a huge hole in the dash we plug our devices into and no one will know why.