Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!sunybcs!dmark
From: dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Message-ID: <9458@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 21 Aug 89 15:55:04 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <30778@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: dmark@sunybcs.UUCP (David Mark)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Geography
Lines: 40

In article <30778@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
>
>What sense does make to worry about 'anyone' 2500 years ago? Meaning comes from
>context and culture ... 

  I certainly agree that 'context and culture' dominate the meaningfulness of
  things.  But does *ALL* meaning come from context and culture, or does some 
  come from the way our senses and bodies interact with the world?

>                            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 can very very easily imagine that the international negation symbol is
  'natural'.  It seems to me that it might be quite 'natural' in almost all 
  cultures that "crossing something out" would be a way of negating it.  (Do 
  the cave drawings ahev some evidence of this?)  If that is true, then the next
  question is whether the circle-and-bar icon 'naturally' 'means'
  crossing something out.  I would guess that the meaning of the drawing-
  line-through-means-cancelling-or-negating-or-forbidding is widesspread
  if not universal, whereas the red-circle-with-diagonal-bar-means-drawing-
  a-line-through is much less automatic.  Does anyone know if the design of
  that symbol was a conscious effort (and if so, was it written up), or
  whether it was just a good idea that caught on?

>                               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.
>
>--Thom

David Mark
dmark@cs.buffalo.edu