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.
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.