Funny how there’s two levels of obsolescence here: I’ve used plenty of floppies, but none of them were actually floppy; I’ve had 8-inch floppies waved at me but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a powered-on 8-inch drive. (Yes, I’ve heard the nuclear launch story.)
I only used 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy disks, and I assume you refer to the 3 1/2 ones as the cover on those was hard. I always thought the 'floppy' part was to refer to the disk itself, which, even on the 3 1/2 ones was flexible, but now you make me question that and perhaps they name just stuck even if they stopped being floppy? I never thought of this because in my country they were referred to as "diskettes" , a word that didn't imply (to me anyway) any flexibility on them.
I think I stopped calling them floppies when we started using 3.5" disks and just called them disks. Because the 5.25's were floppy on the outside, but the 3.5's weren't.
I catch myself asking questions like this, but then I remember how much tech from before my lifetime I can identify. Carriages, crank-started automobiles, biplanes, muskets, fire-starting bows, spinning wheels, washboards, etc.
How do I know what it looks like to press a wax seal with a ring? Or send a message with a telegraph, or climb the rigging of a square-rigged ship?
I know there are people who carefully avoid any media that isn't obviously by and about the present moment, and they'll continue to be clueless about the past like they always have been, but there will also be plenty of people who can identify a CRT into the 22nd century.
> Most people have heard of files and documents in real life
I don’t think so. I’m late 30s and I learned of files and folders on windows long before I was introduced to the physical concept.
I still feel a small tickle in my funny bone when I see a real life version of the folder icon in an office.