Topic summary
Desktop icon
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Icon (computing).
The Desktop metaphor
This model of the desktop metaphor has been adopted by most personal computing systems in the last decades of the 20th century; it remains popular as a "simple intuitive navigation by single user on single system." It is only at the beginning of the 21st century that personal computing is evolving a new metaphor based on Internet connectivity and teams of users, cloud computing. In this new model, data and tools are no longer stored on the single system, instead they are stored someplace else, "in the cloud". The cloud metaphor is replacing the desktop model; it remains to be seen how many of the common desktop icons (file, file folder, trashcan, inbox, filing cabinet) find a place in this new metaphor.