Factoring Progress into our stories.....

[iwatchus]

It is not just technology that can catch us out. Language changes, too.

My current WIP is on a film set in the early 90s, which means referring to actresses. Something that I would not do for a modern-day equivalent.

I am confused about what you would do differently now. I must be missing something.

 

[iwatchus]

I actually learned what a slide rule was because of Heinlein.

I was the last physics major at my college to still use a slide rule. They still have a special place in my heart.

 

[NotWise]

I was the last physics major at my college to still use a slide rule. They still have a special place in my heart.

I was required to use a slide rule for sophomore engineering. I left school for a year and when I went back they'd allowed calculators and there were no slide rules in sight. I had two, and I might still have the good one stashed in my dresser.

I'm really glad I didn't have to use a slide rule for the surveying class.

 

[Writer61]

I am confused about what you would do differently now. I must be missing something.

Actor

 

[MrPixel]

I was the last physics major at my college to still use a slide rule. They still have a special place in my heart.

I was required to use a slide rule for sophomore engineering. I left school for a year and when I went back they'd allowed calculators and there were no slide rules in sight. I had two, and I might still have the good one stashed in my dresser.

I'm really glad I didn't have to use a slide rule for the surveying class.

I'm fairly certain I can lay my hands on the nice Pickett "contrast yellow" aluminum slide rule I used in school. The HP35 had just come out, and the profs' attitudes were basically "just another tool". I did have this wonderful 2-foot slide rule I carried around almost like a sword - how could you not? It had a scabbard, too - but I don't know when I lost it. I have a hunch my soon-to-be ex absconded with it when she was packing my things for my move across the country that she was "so nice to have done for me".

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am confused about what you would do differently now. I must be missing something.

Society has "lost" the gender based nomenclature, "actress". They're all "actors" now. Same way you find "wait staff" instead of "waiters" and "waitresses".

Fair enough too - we've never had Doctors and Doctresses, or pilots and pilotesses. Surgeons, surgeonettes. I could go on, but you get the point.

Having said that, all of my café scenes have waitresses, and there's nothing that good looking boy making the coffee can do about that!

 

[TheLobster]

Actor

So you would only mention actors now, but in the early 90s you’d talk about both actors and actresses?

That’s a rather odd choice, although I do vaguely recall that there might have been more celebrity actresses in the 90s than now. (These days, celebrities seem to come more from music or TV, or completely new media like online streaming).

Edit: Okay, I just read EB’s reply above; that does make a bit more sense. It’s still amusing, considering that a move away from gendered profession nouns is basically the opposite to what happened in many countries outside the Anglosphere.

 

[Writer61]

So you would only mention actors now, but in the early 90s you’d talk about both actors and actresses?

Exactly.

My point in relation to this thread is that it is not only technology that changes over time.

 

[Voboy]

Exactly.

My point in relation to this thread is that it is not only technology that changes over time.

Well taken. Language is useful when you're setting a cop piece in the thirties and the dick needs some shady dame to start giving him the hops about a score, but she's dating a real butter-and-egg man and they need to shake a leg so they can get to the big hooray down at the yacht club.

I suspect if you start filling contemporary stories with all sorts of skibidy, rizzy vocab, flexing on more time-tested English? Your story will end up sounding sus about five years from now.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Well taken. Language is useful when you're setting a cop piece in a thirties and the dick needs some shady dame to start giving him the hops about a score, but she's dating a real butter-and-egg man and they need to shake a leg so they can get to the big hooray down at the yacht club.

I suspect if you start filling contemporary stories with all sorts of skibidy, rizzy vocab, flexing on more time-tested English? Your story will end up sounding sus about five years from now.

This is why I’ve come to love writing period pieces. There is so much fun in exploring the language.

 

[Voboy]

This is why I’ve come to love writing period pieces. There is so much fun in exploring the language.

The same thing, obviously, can happen when writing about vocab terms that seem unfamiliar due to cultural differences. Bill Bryson made a career out of such differences. Having an Irishman get lost among Australian slang in 2025 would probably be analogous to bringing some sort of first-world technology to some backwoods village. The dude showing up with a laptop in a place that's only ever known desktops would seem like a rock star.

I enjoy a film called Grosse Pointe Blank, but it doesn't age all that well because it was made in 1996. There are characters with cellphones and laptops in that movie, but the point of including that technology at the time was to make those characters seem like James Bond. Martin Blank, with his brick phone and his Glocks, was meant to be seen as stylish and futuristic. I suspect a modern audience would miss that nuance.

 

[Writer61]

I enjoy a film called Grosse Pointe Blank, but it doesn't age all that well because it was made in 1996. There are characters with cellphones and laptops in that movie, but the point of including that technology at the time was to make those characters seem like James Bond. Martin Blank, with his brick phone and his Glocks, was meant to be seen as stylish and futuristic. I suspect a modern audience would miss that nuance.

Laptops had been around for a while at that point. I started carrying one in about 1989.

By then, phones were starting to get smaller, too.

 

[Voboy]

Laptops had been around for a while at that point. I started carrying one in about 1989.

By then, phones were starting to get smaller, too.

Yes, but as someone who sat in the theater for that movie? I reckon 90% of the viewing audience would never have actually held either one of them at that point.

Little did we realize.

 

[Writer61]

Yes, but as someone who sat in the theater for that movie? I reckon 90% of the viewing audience would never have actually held either one of them at that point.

Little did we realize.

Fair comment.

 

[TheLobster]

There are characters with cellphones and laptops in that movie, but the point of including that technology at the time was to make those characters seem like James Bond.

Speaking of James Bond, the movies around Brosnan era have this exact problem.

There is a sequence in, I believe, GoldenEye, where he's driving his car through an underground garage by lying across the backseat to avoid gunfire and dragging a stylus across his phone. It was meant to be super high-tech in the 90s, but these days you're left wondering why isn't he using a proper touchscreen.

The earlier movies, on the other hand, don't really have this issue because most of the gadgets Bond uses were meant to be improbable if not comically ridiculous.

 

[MrPixel]

I suspect a modern audience would miss that nuance.

Like the opener of Airplane?