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If you walked out of your home without knowing you’d accidentally time traveled into the past, how long would it take you to realize what had happened? What if they had sent you back ten years, or thirty, or a hundred? Discuss with your team: how far into the past would you need to be to realize instantly that you were in a different era?
Now, ten years later, you'd notice outdated phones, different fashion, and trends that are no longer relevant on social media. It might take you a little while to realize it.
Thirty years ago, payphones replaced smartphones, and there were fewer vehicles on the road. The internet didn’t even exist. You’d notice the difference much more quickly.
One hundred years ago, you'd realize instantly because the world would look entirely different. Horses would be the primary mode of transportation, there would be no skyscrapers, and the architecture would be drastically different—old-fashioned and unlike anything we know today.
Considering all this, a jump back a century would make the differences so striking that it’d be impossible not to notice you've traveled back in time! -Mathias
One clue to your whenabouts might be the text around you: not just the headlines on newspapers and store signs, but the fonts they’re printed in. Consider some of the history of typography, then discuss with your team: how different would the world look today if Microsoft had chosen Comic Sans instead of Calibri as its default typeface in the early 2000s—or as its successor 20 years later. The London Underground also decided to update its font in 2016 for a more modern look—did it succeed? Be sure to learn the difference between serif and sans serif fonts, and then see which ones are used more widely. Does the same distinction apply in non-Western alphabets?
The original font, introduced in 1916 by calligrapher Edward Johnston, has since been adapted to create "Johnston100."
Only minimal adjustments have been made, which will be visible on maps and in stations later this year.
In a blog post, type director Malou Verlomme explained that certain letters, like the lowercase "g," had become "a little bit uniform" over time. "We hope this version of the 'lettering of London' for the digital age will last for another 100 years and beyond," said Mr. Hunter.
As for Microsoft, if the updated designs appear fresh, the company will have a stronger case when it comes time to renew subscriptions to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). The company is now poised to roll out this update after gathering feedback from end users on the five new fonts.
“Today marks the beginning of the final phase of this significant update, where Aptos will become the new default font across Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel for hundreds of millions of users,” wrote Si Daniels, Principal Program Manager for Office Design at Microsoft, in a blog post published Thursday. “Over the next few months, it will become the default font for all our customers.”
Matteson and his colleagues had sent multiple font designs to Microsoft, but the one they selected was his, initially known as Grotesque No. 2. Microsoft then gave it the codename Koyuk, and Matteson later named it Bierstadt, after a mountain in Colorado, where he lives. "Bierstadt" translates to "beer city" in German.
“Aptos has this unique coastal climate, with the beach on one side and the redwoods on the other," he said.
In 2019, Microsoft asked font designer Steve Matteson to create a new grotesque sans-serif font, similar to Helvetica. At the time, Microsoft did not disclose that it was considering it as a potential successor to Calibri, Matteson shared in an interview with CNBC this week. -Patrick (Y9)
If all these fonts confuse you—or you just want to check whether a document (such as an alternative World Scholar’s Cup outline) is a forgery—you could always hire a forensic font expert. Read about the kind of work such experts do, then discuss with your team: should some fonts be reserved for exclusive use by AIs and others for humans?
Fonts have been used for decades to create a certain effect or to emphasize uniqueness. Different brands use different fonts (some copyrighted) to suggest something about their identity. For example, Sprite uses a big, bold, energetic font to evoke adventure, freshness, and nostalgia.
In my opinion, AI should have differentiated fonts from those used by humans. This way, it would be easier to identify what was AI-generated or plagiarized. This would make teachers', lawyers', and many other jobs much easier. People would rely less on ChatGPT and similar AI tools, knowing it would be easy to spot AI-generated content. I think this idea would be a significant improvement, encouraging people to use AI responsibly while stimulating their own creativity and critical thinking. -Ana (Y7)
Time travelers often struggle to pay for things; their currency has a cancelled Marvel actor’s face on it, or they don’t know what money is, or they can’t make the self-checkout machines work. (Then again, can anyone?) If you found yourself at a supermarket in 1963, you wouldn’t have been able to pay for anything at all until the clerk typed in the price of every item you wanted to buy, one at a time. Doing so quickly was a coveted skill: there was even a competition with prizes like free trips to Hawaii. The adoption of the barcode in the 1960s was a buzzkill for such price-inputting savants. Discuss with your team: what other technologies do we take for granted when we’re at stores or shopping online? And do you support efforts to reimagine in-person shopping without any form of checkout at all?
Imagine a time traveler from the past, trying to buy essential items like water and food. What currency would they use? Or would they even understand what "currency" is? Technology is forever changing supermarkets and stores. With the invention of self-checkouts, people no longer need to take out their wallet, count their cash, wait for the cashier to scan every item, and then make their payment. This was a standard procedure in 1963.
There were even competitions to see who could be the fastest cashier, entering a set amount of prices. The prize for winning? A trip to Hawaii!
The invention of the barcode revolutionized self-checkouts, allowing customers to avoid manually inputting the price of each item. Amazon Go takes this even further, eliminating self-checkout machines entirely. Instead, your purchases are automatically added to your Amazon checkout list on your phone! -Tudor (Y8)
Just as barcodes transformed checkout, QR codes have changed many other everyday experiences, from debate tree distribution (sometimes) to accessing restaurant menus. But a change that seemed inevitable during the pandemic has run into resistance since. Discuss with your team: is this pushback a classic example of society resisting technological progress, only to eventually succumb? Are there any technologies that were supposed to change the world which were rejected and stayed rejected?
The paragraph speaks about QR codes in restaurants. The theme “reigniting the future” refers to taking action now in order to reignite the future, a better future. This could hint at sustainability and replacement of paper versions of menus, documents and bills being a part of the curriculum. -Iannis (Y9)
Recently, the United States Department of State changed its own default font from Times New Roman to Calibri—20 years after first switching from Courier to Times New Roman. Each move sparked at least 36 points of controversy. Discuss with your team: should governments even have standardized fonts? If so, how should they pick them, and when should they change them?
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