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From: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Thom Gillespie)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Message-ID: <30778@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 21 Aug 89 05:34:50 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
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Reply-To: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie)
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In article <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU> dmark@sunybcs.UUCP (David Mark) writes:

>  The Christian cross is *NOT* at all the sort of thing that I was looking for,
>  or thinking of, in that it (presumably) would have meant nothing to someone
>  2500 years ago, or to the Dani in New Guinea on first European contact this
>  century.  The "meaning" of the cross, which presumably *is* one of the most
>  widely-recognized icons, probably is not at all "natural", but has to be
>  learned.  The explosion hazard one probably does have wide inherent
>  meaning.  How about the International negation icon, the red circle with
>  diagonal bar?  I wonder if that makes sense to most people the first time
>  they see it?
>
>David Mark

What sense does make to worry about 'anyone' 2500 years ago? Meaning comes from
context and culture ... I didn't understand the international recognition
symbol the first time I saw it. For that matter I didn't recognize it as any
thing, it had no meaning or even existence until the meaning was pointed out to
me. Modern artists often exploit the fact that a perfectly recognizable object
in an unusual situation often becomes abstract to the observer, e.g. Duchamp's
Urinal by R. Mutt called god.

I agree that the 'cross' icon is learned but how could you imagine that the
international symbol for negation is 'natural'. To me it seems totally
un-natural and prefabricated. I don't think that there are any natural icons
anymore than there are natural languages that make sense to most people the
first time they hear them.

Do you think that the cave dwellers recognized the Bison drawn on the wall the
first time it was drawn. Some probably did, others had to be educated. My guess
is that the bison was probably one of the first icons wo/man produced. But even
that icon only had meaning and recognition within the context of grassy plains
people.

--Thom