I was doing some edits to an article on computers and the Fourth Amendment over the weekend, and spent some time reworking a discussion of the Supreme Court's 1987 decision in Arizona v. Hicks. In that case, a police officer picked up a stolen Bang & Olufsen turntable and copied down the serial number to confirm it was stolen. The Court held that picking up the turntable was a Fourth Amendment search, but writing down the number was not a Fourth Amendment seizure.

  Here's the question: When describing the facts of the case, should I describe the turntable as, well, a turntable, or should I just describe it more generically as audio equipment? If anyone is reading my article in 20 years, will they know what a turntable is? Will they wonder what a turning table looks like and why someone would want one? I like to think that people will still be playing vinyl LPs on machines like my Harman/Kardon T-65C for a long time, but it doesn't seem too likely.