the persistence of names
The persistence of names originally uploaded by steelmonkey
A sign warning about the premises being video recorded. Note the use of 'video tape': it's unlikely that the security system still relies on loads of video tape instead of digital storage, but the language still reflects the old concepts.
When do concepts fade away? Compare with intentionally retaining language/structure/imagery for familiarity's sake: this is not such a case - there are no functional advantages to using 'tape', since just the word 'video' suffices to convey the general nature of the surveillance. Unless the word 'tape' is still a good synonym for 'record'.
Where is the graveyard of dead words?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph is a parallel concept, I think.
Thanks for that nugget. Yes, that seems to be similar. What's even more interesting I think is the parallelism between form and symbolism. Here, the word 'tape' has moved from a denotative to a connotative meaning, and back to denotative ('tape' first as the storage form, then 'tape' meaning to record onto a tape, and now 'tape' meaning just to record)