Blinkenlights: Difference between revisions

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(I can't believe we didn't have this yet! So, starting it off...)
 
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Originally, '''Blinkenlights''' were simply disgnostic lights on electronic devices. In some places, they still are. But that's boring.
 
Thanks to signs in [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|"mock German"]] that appeared in various computer rooms in [[The Fifties|the 1950s]], Blinkenlights became something for non-technical people to look at, instead of touching something they really shouldn't touch. From there, it was only a matter of time - less than a deacdedecade, for Blinkenlights to become a visual shorthand for computershigh technology in general, not just computers - and they were ''always'' blinking.
 
As computers became more ubiquitous, the trope faded from the public consciousness. Nowadays it's used in works that purposefully invoke [[Zeerust]], always paired with [[Beeping Computers]].