mef@dalek.silvlis.com (Mary Ellen Foley) (08/24/89)
eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) brought up the pictures and sounds of Earth that Sagan's group designed for Pioneers 10 and 11. I recall being amazed at what they chose -- pictures of people in underwater gear swimming around with the fish, for example. Even a small human child can't recognize that that's a person in a mask and fins wearing a tank with hoses, and will think it's some other kind of creature. So how could they possibly expect an alien to understand? I also recall a pattern of dots that was "obviously" indicating the moleculare structures of H2, CO2, etc. If I see a pattern of dots, the first thing that leaps to mind is definitely NOT the molecular structures of H2 and CO2. I vote with the people who've posted the opinion that there is no such thing as a universal icon. mef -- WARNING: Opinions in posting are farther away than they appear.
chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) (08/26/89)
At first glance, I thought that this discussion of the "universality" of icons was circling around the age old Nature-Nurture controversy in psychology. On the one side, neuroscience research has demonstrated that the "atoms" of perception, the basic units by which we perceive the world, are prewired not learned. It certainly seems possible that some simple icons might trip prewired patterns, like the famous Pitts and McCullough(?) paper about the prewiring of the frogs eye to spot flies. Perhaps a universal icon would resemble visual "illusions" that are due to the specifics of the implementation of vision by the human brain. On the other side, a "universal" icon might come from species-wide experience, for example the outline of the breast seen by a baby. Such examples are very hard to find. The variety of human experience is much greater than the commonality; many babies are bottle fed. Thinking about this made me realize another aspect of the reasoning in the icon discussion. If you define an icon as a symbol, then it can have no relationship to the object of the symbol beyond the agreement about its meaning. But, the symbol "icon" refers to something that might sometimes be a sign rather than a symbol. (I am using "sign" here to mean something that actually is related to its referent. The track of an animal is a "sign" of its presence, not a symbol.) So, if an icon is defined to be a symbol, it cannot be universal by definition. But, if I could construct a simple picture that either activates pre-wired perceptual mechanisms in the brain or provokes some association with species-wide experience, then that picture might be a universal icon.
BRENT@MAINE.BITNET (Brent C J Britton) (08/28/89)
In article <343@aratar.UUCP>, chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) writes: > >On the other side, a "universal" icon might come from species-wide experience, >for example the outline of the breast seen by a baby. Such examples are >very hard to find. The variety of human experience is much greater than >the commonality; many babies are bottle fed. > >(...) But, if I could construct >a simple picture that either activates pre-wired perceptual mechanisms in >the brain or provokes some association with species-wide experience, then >that picture might be a universal icon. How about a smiling face vs. a frowning one? I would suspect these to be universal (among humans) indicators of "good" and "bad", or even "yes" and "no" respectively. Facial expressions are effective communicators, and can impart a whole slug of different concepts (curiousity, anger...). Brent ------- .. Sine here... +-----------------+ . . Brent C.J. Britton <Brent@Maine.bitnet> | Ehhhhhhhhhem... | Computing and Data Processing Services | my opinions, | . . . University of Maine System | which are mine, | Orono, ME 04469 | are mine. | . . Voice: 207/581-3557 +-----------------+ .. Fax: 207/581-3531
hans@nlgvax.UUCP (Hans Zuidam) (08/28/89)
BRENT@MAINE.BITNET (Brent C J Britton) writes: >How about a smiling face vs. a frowning one? I would suspect these to be >universal (among humans) indicators of "good" and "bad", or even "yes" >and "no" respectively. Which is exactly what I use as an icon for my "Console Tool" on my Sun! By default it uses an obnoxious "Stop" sign which starts flashing when something happens. Most people who see it, think it is great fun and quickly understand what is going on, except that you have to explain the function of the icon in general. There seem only to be a few icons which are of "universal" meaning: clock, mailbox and shell. For people who do not have Suns (yes there are those): the console on a Sun collects all log messages normally. Someone (I forgot who, sorry) wrote a program which immitates such a console. When something happens (e.g. a log message is written to it), the connected icon is replaced by another one. Opening the icon to a window show the message. Hans -- Hans Zuidam E-Mail: hans@pcg.philips.nl Philips Telecommunications and Data Systems, Tel: +31 40 892288 Project Centre Geldrop, Building XR Willem Alexanderlaan 7B, 5664 AN Geldrop The Netherlands
karl@ficc.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (09/11/89)
In article <MEF.89Aug23122352@dalek.silvlis.com>, mef@dalek.silvlis.com (Mary Ellen Foley) writes: > eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) brought up the pictures and sounds of > Earth that Sagan's group designed for Pioneers 10 and 11. I recall > being amazed at what they chose -- pictures of people in underwater > gear swimming around with the fish, for example. Even a small human > child can't recognize that that's a person in a mask and fins wearing > a tank with hoses, and will think it's some other kind of creature. > So how could they possibly expect an alien to understand? Any alien likely to find Pioneer 1x will probably understand tanks and hoses; a planetary impact is incredibly unlikely, and would be destructive. The point is well-taken though. > I also recall a pattern of dots that was "obviously" indicating the > moleculare structures of H2, CO2, etc. If I see a pattern of dots, > the first thing that leaps to mind is definitely NOT the molecular > structures of H2 and CO2. I don't think it was expected that the patterns of dots indicating the molecular structures of H2, CO2, etc would "leap to mind" of any aliens discovering the probe. Hopefully, though, after careful study, etc, they would figure it out. More below. > I vote with the people who've posted the opinion that there is no > such thing as a universal icon. But there could be useful "relative" icons to serve as a basis for others' careful figuring-out of *some* information from the icons. For example, on that Pioneer plaque was an image of the Pioneer probe itself. That shouldn't be too hard to figure out assuming the probe was mostly intact. As I recall, too, they had a number table where they counted up a ways in binary or something, then, too, they were trying to numerically show the scale of various things. The image of the spacecraft provided a baseline. (I saw a replica several years ago at the Boston Science Museum -- this is hazy.) They also showed a view of some stars from our solar system (?) and showed nine planets, circling the third one, etc. I think they worked pretty hard on it. I tend to agree with Mary Ellen that there aren't universal icons and that it would be very hard to figure out, but any discoverers of the probe are likely to have *some* stuff in common with us, like a technology capable of supporting space flight, implying a whole slough of understanding of physics, chemistry, etc, which would help a lot. I don't think a pre-tech group, even human, could figure it out at all. -- -- uunet!ficc!karl "Have you debugged your wolf today?"