Wordplay
Y'know, there's a metaphor out there that we all hear quite a bit that's been ingrained in our language and our culture for generations, with a firmly established meaning that will likely never be changed at this point. But the more I think about this metaphor, the more I realize that the meaning created for it doesn't make a damned lick of sense. None in the least.
It's the common practice of referring to old, outdated things as "dinosaurs." We've all heard it, and many of us likely used it. To call something a "dinosaur" means that it's obsolete, that it's been replaced by a newer, better item and has been driven into disuse for an inherent inferiority and an inability to adapt to the times. The idea when the phrase was coined was that dinosaurs themselves were slow, stupid creatures that simply couldn't keep up with the newer, faster, smarter mammals, and went extinct in the face of our own superior ancestors.
But that's an incorrect view, and in the 21st century, we know better. Dinosaurs weren't slow, they weren't stupid, and they weren't unable to adapt. Hell, they adapted pretty damn well to several global changes in vegetation, continental drift the likes of which we haven't seen since, the formation of polar climates, the formation of seasons, and specifically came to prominence by being among the first animals to adapt to worldwide desert and drought conditions that, some 20 million years prior, had killed off 90% of all life on the planet's surface. They lasted 160 million years as the dominant lifeforms of the planet, longer than any other type of multicellular life this planet has ever known with the possible exception of arthropods (and soundly beating out us "superior" mammals by a good 110 million years thus far). And had a freak accident not occurred some 65 million years ago, they likely would have continued to thrive on to this day, further adapting to the changing climates as the continents became stabilized.
If anything, being called a "dinosaur" should be a compliment. Because after all, what someone's really saying when they use that metaphor is that the item in question was so ridiculously successful that nothing on this planet could top it, and it took something not of this Earth to finally put a premature end to it. Fuck, I'm sure any one of us would feel pretty damn good to be regarded as being just that overwhelmingly successful, right?
It's the common practice of referring to old, outdated things as "dinosaurs." We've all heard it, and many of us likely used it. To call something a "dinosaur" means that it's obsolete, that it's been replaced by a newer, better item and has been driven into disuse for an inherent inferiority and an inability to adapt to the times. The idea when the phrase was coined was that dinosaurs themselves were slow, stupid creatures that simply couldn't keep up with the newer, faster, smarter mammals, and went extinct in the face of our own superior ancestors.
But that's an incorrect view, and in the 21st century, we know better. Dinosaurs weren't slow, they weren't stupid, and they weren't unable to adapt. Hell, they adapted pretty damn well to several global changes in vegetation, continental drift the likes of which we haven't seen since, the formation of polar climates, the formation of seasons, and specifically came to prominence by being among the first animals to adapt to worldwide desert and drought conditions that, some 20 million years prior, had killed off 90% of all life on the planet's surface. They lasted 160 million years as the dominant lifeforms of the planet, longer than any other type of multicellular life this planet has ever known with the possible exception of arthropods (and soundly beating out us "superior" mammals by a good 110 million years thus far). And had a freak accident not occurred some 65 million years ago, they likely would have continued to thrive on to this day, further adapting to the changing climates as the continents became stabilized.
If anything, being called a "dinosaur" should be a compliment. Because after all, what someone's really saying when they use that metaphor is that the item in question was so ridiculously successful that nothing on this planet could top it, and it took something not of this Earth to finally put a premature end to it. Fuck, I'm sure any one of us would feel pretty damn good to be regarded as being just that overwhelmingly successful, right?