5 ms·

Why did words that end in "tron" once sound so futuristic? (2017)

41 points by mon_ 3y ago

z500 3y ago
> What suffixes and embodied symbols capture the spirit of our own times? -r jumps to mind
mon_ 3y ago
https://archive.is/BcklA https://archive.is/BcklA
supertron 3y ago
> the suffix ‘tron’ became associated with technological supremacy I couldn't agree more.
- Karellen 3y ago
  ... ... ... username checks out (gd&r)
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  I always think of 'trace on' when I see it.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  I second this.
jhbadger 3y ago
As the article mentions, "-stat", and "-matic" are two other suffixes that were used to convey high-tech in the mid 20th century. Another one was "-rama" (presumably derived from the Cinerama panoramic technology created to attract viewers back to movie theaters in the 1950s when TV was beginning to take away their audiences).
- s_dev 3y ago
  Or even Futurama from 1939: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F...
- stereo 3y ago
  Or -ola a few decades before - Pianola, Motorola, Victrola, Crayola, Granola, Cola...
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  Emblems of "newness", like coolness, lose that quality pretty quickly. Even post-modern is old hat. What currently connotes newness? Or is the present age so dystopian and pessimistic that we lack one?
LeoPanthera 3y ago
Ha. My entire career I've named (almost) every program I've ever written something-tron, or more usually, something-o-tron. (Sometimes suffixed with "2000" or "3000" depending on how cool it is.) I guess this means I really am old now.
- lagrange77 3y ago
  :D Reminds me of my (very cool) Taskmaster 3000 program.
- steve1977 3y ago
  gpt-o-tron 3000…
- hawkesnest 3y ago
  I expect the modern equivalent would be "-inator" as a suffix.
  - xg15 3y ago
    To boost your Perry the Platypus streed cred, definitely.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- euroderf 3y ago
  Andrétron 3000
yrro 3y ago
Fascinating. I'd love to see a timeline of all these prefixes/suffixes. I suppose -GPT appears at the end...
Karellen 3y ago
By Vectron's mighty claw, so they do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI
beej71 3y ago
My dental hygienist let slip that her sonic pick tool was branded "Cavitron" the other day. Got a good laugh out of that.
karmakaze 3y ago
DIY Perks' Interrotron[0] Btw "Tron" the movies are a reference to the BASIC debugging command TRON/TROFF for trace on/off. [0] https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars?si=fK2Vd1Q2e73IZ3Bq&t=663 https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars?si=fK2Vd1Q2e73IZ3Bq&t=663
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Wow this is new to me, but is it true? Sources seem conflicting (on mobile, didn't watch and only did a brief google skim). Edit: it seems to be false. https://www.tampabay.com/trons-original-trailer-made-more-sense-than-the-movie/2329316/ https://www.tampabay.com/trons-original-trailer-made-more-se... > TRON is also a debugging command in the BASIC programming language, meaning "TRace ON." However, movie producers swear they didn't know this when naming the movie and just picked the name from inside the word "electronic." Wikipedia agrees. This just confirmed my principally suspicious attitude about trusting videos as sources.
  - djmips 3y ago
    If you clicked on the video it was the DIY perks video...
    - moritzwarhier 3y ago
      so? btw i did briefly (on mute) and was wondering it the commenter was joking or trolling, but it doesn't really matter.
      - djmips 3y ago
        My bad, it was the the only video link in the comments and you had said "This just confirmed my principally suspicious attitude about trusting videos as sources." - so I just assumed that was the video you were referring too. Oops.
        moritzwarhier 3y ago
smitty1e 3y ago
Hearkening to electron? Via Wikipedia: ...the Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον (ēlektron).
- signaru 3y ago
  Then electronics... Electronic or "e-" also made things sound futuristic, especially when the non-electronic counterparts were still common.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  electrons are definitely yellow: https://xkcd.com/2734/ https://xkcd.com/2734/
damiankennedy 3y ago
The city I live in is sarcastically called "Hamiltron"
ericfrazier 3y ago
Magnetron still sounds futuristic to me.
torstenvl 3y ago
I thought it was ending in "ocom" It just conveys this optimistic, futuristic attitude. Like you can do anything. The only limit is yourself.
drewcoo 3y ago
To respond to the highly-editorial HN title with a hot take: "because humans stopped science-ing."
- bigfishrunning 3y ago
  Speak for yourself; lots of humans are still science-ing
hateful 3y ago
A: tron = ‘tool’ in Greek.
xg15 3y ago
I think by now you could start an entire collection of retrofuturistic ideas and expressions that at some point signified progress before falling out of fashion. What I think is interesting though is that sometimes expressions that were thought of as well and truly dead reappear or take on a changed meaning. Two examples: The e- prefix. It used to be ubiquitous around I think the 90s, but then at some point must have gotten rapidly unpopular and basically vanished. The only place where it survived was in the term "email" as some sort of linguistic fossil. Though recently it seems to come back in terms like "e-commerce", "e-cigarette" or "e-paper". Cyber-. I think the roots actually predate the computer age with the 19th century field of Cybernetics. From that it took on a strong role in 80s science fiction at the beginning of the internet with visions of augmented humans and livable virtual worlds. Then Gibson gave us the "cyberspace", which became mainstream and for some time described the actual internet - before at some point taking on a terribly stale and outdated feel like "information superhighway". But for some reason the prefix eventually reemerged with a different meaning and today seems to mostly refer to security or military matters with relation to the internet. I'm not sure how exactly this change of meaning happened.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  Space Age is a fun one. If we get far enough, we might have multiple Space Ages-- the original Sputnik-Apollo era, the era when it starts to become viable for ordinary civillians but novel and likely still seeking a killer app, and finally the era where space travel is universal.
cafard 3y ago
I guess that you should ask the matron.

41 points by mon_ 3y ago

z500 3y ago

> What suffixes and embodied symbols capture the spirit of our own times? -r jumps to mind

mon_ 3y ago

https://archive.is/BcklA https://archive.is/BcklA

supertron 3y ago

> the suffix ‘tron’ became associated with technological supremacy I couldn't agree more.

Karellen 3y ago
... ... ... username checks out (gd&r)
sumtechguy 3y ago
I always think of 'trace on' when I see it.
Rinzler89 3y ago
I second this.

jhbadger 3y ago

As the article mentions, "-stat", and "-matic" are two other suffixes that were used to convey high-tech in the mid 20th century. Another one was "-rama" (presumably derived from the Cinerama panoramic technology created to attract viewers back to movie theaters in the 1950s when TV was beginning to take away their audiences).

s_dev 3y ago
Or even Futurama from 1939: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_Fair) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s_F...
stereo 3y ago
Or -ola a few decades before - Pianola, Motorola, Victrola, Crayola, Granola, Cola...
hyperthesis 3y ago
Emblems of "newness", like coolness, lose that quality pretty quickly. Even post-modern is old hat. What currently connotes newness? Or is the present age so dystopian and pessimistic that we lack one?

LeoPanthera 3y ago

Ha. My entire career I've named (almost) every program I've ever written something-tron, or more usually, something-o-tron. (Sometimes suffixed with "2000" or "3000" depending on how cool it is.) I guess this means I really am old now.

lagrange77 3y ago
:D Reminds me of my (very cool) Taskmaster 3000 program.
steve1977 3y ago
gpt-o-tron 3000…
hawkesnest 3y ago
I expect the modern equivalent would be "-inator" as a suffix.
- xg15 3y ago
  To boost your Perry the Platypus streed cred, definitely.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
euroderf 3y ago
Andrétron 3000

yrro 3y ago

Fascinating. I'd love to see a timeline of all these prefixes/suffixes. I suppose -GPT appears at the end...

Karellen 3y ago

By Vectron's mighty claw, so they do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icTrzUuWlHI

beej71 3y ago

My dental hygienist let slip that her sonic pick tool was branded "Cavitron" the other day. Got a good laugh out of that.

karmakaze 3y ago

DIY Perks' Interrotron[0] Btw "Tron" the movies are a reference to the BASIC debugging command TRON/TROFF for trace on/off. [0] https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars?si=fK2Vd1Q2e73IZ3Bq&t=663 https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars?si=fK2Vd1Q2e73IZ3Bq&t=663

moritzwarhier 3y ago
Wow this is new to me, but is it true? Sources seem conflicting (on mobile, didn't watch and only did a brief google skim). Edit: it seems to be false. https://www.tampabay.com/trons-original-trailer-made-more-sense-than-the-movie/2329316/ https://www.tampabay.com/trons-original-trailer-made-more-se... > TRON is also a debugging command in the BASIC programming language, meaning "TRace ON." However, movie producers swear they didn't know this when naming the movie and just picked the name from inside the word "electronic." Wikipedia agrees. This just confirmed my principally suspicious attitude about trusting videos as sources.
- djmips 3y ago
  If you clicked on the video it was the DIY perks video...
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    so? btw i did briefly (on mute) and was wondering it the commenter was joking or trolling, but it doesn't really matter.
    - djmips 3y ago
      My bad, it was the the only video link in the comments and you had said "This just confirmed my principally suspicious attitude about trusting videos as sources." - so I just assumed that was the video you were referring too. Oops.
      - moritzwarhier 3y ago

smitty1e 3y ago

Hearkening to electron? Via Wikipedia: ...the Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον (ēlektron).

signaru 3y ago
Then electronics... Electronic or "e-" also made things sound futuristic, especially when the non-electronic counterparts were still common.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
electrons are definitely yellow: https://xkcd.com/2734/ https://xkcd.com/2734/

damiankennedy 3y ago

The city I live in is sarcastically called "Hamiltron"

ericfrazier 3y ago

Magnetron still sounds futuristic to me.

torstenvl 3y ago

I thought it was ending in "ocom" It just conveys this optimistic, futuristic attitude. Like you can do anything. The only limit is yourself.

drewcoo 3y ago

To respond to the highly-editorial HN title with a hot take: "because humans stopped science-ing."

bigfishrunning 3y ago
Speak for yourself; lots of humans are still science-ing

hateful 3y ago

A: tron = ‘tool’ in Greek.

xg15 3y ago

I think by now you could start an entire collection of retrofuturistic ideas and expressions that at some point signified progress before falling out of fashion. What I think is interesting though is that sometimes expressions that were thought of as well and truly dead reappear or take on a changed meaning. Two examples: The e- prefix. It used to be ubiquitous around I think the 90s, but then at some point must have gotten rapidly unpopular and basically vanished. The only place where it survived was in the term "email" as some sort of linguistic fossil. Though recently it seems to come back in terms like "e-commerce", "e-cigarette" or "e-paper". Cyber-. I think the roots actually predate the computer age with the 19th century field of Cybernetics. From that it took on a strong role in 80s science fiction at the beginning of the internet with visions of augmented humans and livable virtual worlds. Then Gibson gave us the "cyberspace", which became mainstream and for some time described the actual internet - before at some point taking on a terribly stale and outdated feel like "information superhighway". But for some reason the prefix eventually reemerged with a different meaning and today seems to mostly refer to security or military matters with relation to the internet. I'm not sure how exactly this change of meaning happened.

hakfoo 3y ago
Space Age is a fun one. If we get far enough, we might have multiple Space Ages-- the original Sputnik-Apollo era, the era when it starts to become viable for ordinary civillians but novel and likely still seeking a killer app, and finally the era where space travel is universal.

cafard 3y ago

I guess that you should ask the matron.