the.com/copy paste
the ctrl+c, ctrl+v handshake that built the internet and ruined a thousand essays.
means a way of duplicating information from one place and inserting it into another, exactly, without redoing the work.
from larry tesler invented cut, copy, and paste in 1973 at xerox parc, trying to make computers feel less like typewriters and more like scissors and glue.
inventor's revengetesler's license plate literally read no copy
clipboard metaphornamed after actual physical clipboards holding papers
ctrl+c originapple's early mac team standardized the shortcut in 1983
stack overflow jokeprogrammers call it engineering when it compiles
for instance
plagiarism scandals — turnitin flags billions of copy pasted student papers yearly
chain emails — forward this to 10 friends culture ran entirely on paste
legal contracts — boilerplate clauses copied verbatim across millions of documents