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From: ok@.cs.mu.oz (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Summary: explosion is universal???
Message-ID: <1975@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 30 Aug 89 08:07:31 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
Lines: 29

In article <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) writes:
> In article <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
> >In article <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> >>In article <1985@softway.oz> gary@softway.oz (Friend of Elvenkind) writes:
> >>>I have
> >>>a feeling that for every icon useful to your own culture there will exist
> >>>an alternate culture which would not understand it.  Can anyone suggest a
> >>>universal icon?

> >>I think the one for "explosion hazard" is probably fairly universal; you
> >>have to make some fairly drastic assumptions to make it incomprehensible.

>   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 explosion hazard one probably does have wide inherent
>   meaning.

I'm afraid I don't know what the explosion hazard icon looks like.
I would point out that someone 2500 years ago would almost certainly
never have seen an explosion.  You can't have a universal icon whose
referent is not universal.

One way of looking for "universal" icons is to look at ancient writing
systems and see if you can pick up what a symbol stands for before you
look at the answer.  For example, in both Egyptian and Sumerian, the
sign for "woman" is a picture of the female genitals, which is reasonably
universal.  Two possible universal icons would be a ripple for water and
a lightning bolt for "something to do with lightning, possibly dangerous".