A quick thought about icons and symbols with some clarity / by Alice Hawke

Not strictly related to the perception of the self online, but still pertinent to the digital world, icons and symbols play a large part of the virtual world many of us inhabit.

For example, on Facebook chat, next to the names of people it shows the word "Web" or "Mobile" and a dot, both in green. Across the web, green signifies availability in the way of a symbol - we as a society agree that it means available, red means away, and, on messaging services that support it, yellow/orange being a state of temporary unavailability or inactivity. These are symbols.

With Loren Carpenter's Pong experiment, holding up the green side of the paddle made the bat go up, and red made it go down. Although I've been told this, I would have just assumed that green would control up anyway, because as a color it has connotations of positivity and progress, such as with a traffic light.

With icons, it's so obvious that I'll just stick to the clichés - on my computer I see a trash can to delete things, I see a floppy disk to save.

However, there are arguments everywhere about what qualifies as an icon, and index, or a symbol. To clarify, again:

  • An icon visually represents what it stands for - the trash can icon reminds you of disposing of things, so you know that's what it does on a computer
  • A symbol is only linked to what it represents because society has instilled that link - such as green on a traffic light meaning go
  • An index has a direct connection with the assumption you instinctively make - the classic one taught in communication studies is that "smoke is an index of fire" in that if you see smoke, you assume there's a fire. Or for the sake of relating it to the representation of the self topic, the assumptions that certain belongings of mine immediately and somewhat subconsciously instill in the minds of the viewer.

Those explanations comply with Peirce's classification of signs, the definition of symbol matches with Saussure's theory on the arbitrary link between signifiers and the signified, and flirts with Barthe's ideas of varying connotations.