Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!thom
From: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Thom Gillespie)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Keywords: interfaces, icons, cross-linguistic issues, Spanish
Message-ID: <30800@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 22 Aug 89 00:54:42 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <6531@stiatl.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
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In article <6531@stiatl.UUCP> tom@stiatl.UUCP (Tom Wiencko) writes:
>
>The folks who sent out out Galactic calling card (was it Voyager?) fought
>with this idea, and came up with symbols they felt would be as universal
>as possible.  They were visual in nature (thus arguably could be called 
>icons) as well as physical representations of sound (in the form of some
>sort of a phonograph record).  It is interesting to note, however, that
>even on this planet many, many people who saw these symbols and heard
>the recording could not figure out what was being communicated.  ...

I realize that we think of 'icon' as pictorial but it doesn't seem that we have
to. It might be useful to expand the idea to sound, smell, taste or touch. I
mean after all icon originally meant a sacred image until it was secularized. 
But why not an iconic sound. I'll bet the iconic sound of a wolf in the woods at midnight with you in the quallofil has a similar impact on an awful lot of 
people regardless of their language ... or the sound of  a rattle snake in the 
dark.I first met a ratle snake on a desert road in the dark five years ago ... 
every inch of me except for my brain knew what was 2 feet away from me. After I 
untangled myself from my bike which I feel backwards over I realized what 
almost happened. I think that in the west ( where I live) we over emphasis our 
visual information. For universal icons I vote for wolf and rattle smake sounds and maybe brown bear smell in early spring on Kodiak Island. These I consider
natural.

--Thom