[jlgreco]

No dice on the gmail android application unfortunately, where the icons are indecipherable.

Anyway, I am confused as to why the librarians would think college students have never seen floppies, particularly "a few years ago". Flash drives really only started to cut into floppy use in around 2003-2004 from my perspective. Before that everyone of course used CD's for big stuff, but floppies if they wanted to shuffle documents around. I remember submitting assignments to teachers on floppy drives as late as 2004.

This seems to be the modern equivalent of: "I bet you've never seen one of these before!" * points to a vinyl record *.

[griffindy]

but very few people who are in college right now were perhaps old enough to remember floppy disks. I graduated from college in 2012 and remember having floppy disks as a kid (I think for Encarta?) but don't remember ever using them.

I think that we're right on the cusp of people graduating college who have never used a floppy disk.

[jlgreco]

I figure a college freshman's knowledge of tech should surely go at least twelve years back in all but the rare case. I haven't seen continuous stationary printers, 8-tracks, or even 5.25" floppies since I was in elementary school, but those things would not baffle me today, let alone 12 years from when I saw them.

12 years ago flash drives were barely 1 year old, were quite expensive, and barely stored more than a floppy anyway. Network storage in organizations like schools was abysmal (actually, this hasn't really changed from what I have seen...), services like dropbox were non-existent for regular consumers, and who the hell ever used zip drives? Floppies were everywhere.

If you told me that people graduating highschool right now did not know why floppies were called "floppies", then I would not be terribly surprised, but I think we've still got a few years left until they don't know what they are.

I don't know, maybe my school district had some sort of technology lagging bubble around it. That actually seems plausible.

[mwcampbell]

I also remember using floppy disks in around 2004, so it's not just you.