Sharp Tools

In Touch With Your Greener Self, Bitch

This is one of those small annoyances that after several years has rubbed me the wrong way for long enough to warrant a kvetch. Why the hell do desktop software designers feel the need to provide us with an icon of a 'recycle bin' rather than a trash can? What prompted this sudden switchover? I mean, if there's one place where we shouldn't have to fucking worry about whether or not our paper is going to kill the planet if we throw it away, it's on our virtual fucking desktops. So the one place we can enjoy a bit of freedom from the goddamn nanny impulses of the green/politically correct/ultra-crunchy/hipper-than-thou forces of modern tolerant society, i.e. our own private virtual metaphors, have been invaded. There's even a stupid recycling icon on the can icon just to remind us that we're being good.

Christ.

IIRC, Windows started this execrable practice with Windows 95 or Windows 98. Now I see it's invaded my company's contribution, with SLED10. In a particularly nauseating shade of green, yet.

What the hell is wrong with a trash can, anyway? Sometimes you throw stuff away, because you want it to go, you know, away. Given that the whole point of a metaphorical iconography is to ensure that your task is carried out with minimal confusion by representing a proces with minimal ambiguity, why would you use a recycle bin? The entire point of a recycle bin is to point out that 'trash isn't always trash.' However, the premise of that statement is explicitly based on a real-world assumption - namely, that you care what you put in the trash is made of. Since a computer document isn't made of anything, WHY THE FUCK DO THIS?

God, this makes me angry.

Which of course means I just need a life.

Posted by jbz at August 17, 2006 5:56 PM | TrackBack