Why no new notations since 1960?

Carl Feynman
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:23:19 GMT

Writing consists of language and also notations, systems of marks that communicate meaning in a specialized domain. Examples of fields with their own highly developed notation are music, mathematics, architecture, electronics and chemistry. There are also more minor types of notation, for example, welding, meteorology and finite state machines. Here's the question: all the notations I'm aware of were invented before about 1960. Over the past few decades, people have invented all sorts of fancy notations, but none of them have caught on in the applicable field. Why not?

Some answers:

Of course there are new notations. I am just an old man and haven't noticed. (I have noticed entity-relationship diagrams are a minor notation that caught on this century. But that's all I can think of).

The upsurge of typed and computer-generated documents meant that anything that wasn't easy to type on an existing keyboard wasn't used. Maybe true for the '60s to the '80s, but we've had good systems for propagating arbitrary marks on paper both before and after.

It's a hard time for notations in general. For example, the elaborate system of conventions around mechanical drawing that I learned in high school drafting class has been replaced by CAD systems, which are far more readable and easy to use. The communicative purpose of notations has been replaced by computer user interfaces.

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