Symbols/Icons - Then and Now!

Symbolism has come a full circle! All of us are aware that human beings started communicating with each other through symbols, apart from non-verbal communications. These symbolic representation of the objects, views etc are the first scripts. All the caves and places where the early human being lived have those symbols. These were in the form of carvings or lines or shapes drawn. These symbols were the first basis of communication for the human beings with others. Later, as the civilisation progressed language was invented and communication through languages took prominence. The prominence is such that languages overtook the symbols in such a way that thousands of languages took birth across the globe and continents. Even though languages took prominent seat for communication, symbols were not dumped altogether. Symbols continue to be part of the human communications. A symbol has become equivalent to thousand words. If one has to represent a country or civilisation, race or tribe, place or position, symbols continue to be part of communication. Several art forms (drawing, painting, drama, movie etc) too had symbols at their core depiction of the reality or surreality they were representing. Symbols played a prominent role in science and its development, by absorbing several greek and latin letters to depict some function of the science. For example, Pi, Alpha, beta etc… But all said and done these external symbols were restricted to literate and elite sections of the society. When the concept of organisation or a group of individuals working together for a common objective/mission took shape, the need for a common agreed symbol to tell others what the group is all about was strongly felt. Then organisations started having a symbol in the form of a logo. Nowadays organisations pay huge money to designt their logo. Some organisations pay huge royalty to use another organisation’s logo. When the modern gadgets such as computers were invented, text used to be driving force for programming language software such as COBOL, Fortran, Pascal etc though backed up by binary digital system. But the introduction of graphic user interface (GUI) and What you see is what you get (WYSIWIG) changed the interface with the computers. Operating system software such as Mac OS and Windows changed the way we use the computer software. For different computer functions different icons/symbols were designed and made part of the software. Through different input hardware such as mouse, joystick etc, the user need to click on the symbol/logo/icon to perform the computer operation that it is designed for. This made the computer usage very easy thing to do. So the software applications proliferated on these operating system platforms. The much famous MS Office software also has several icons. Most of the software manufacturers have more or less standardised though there were some deviations from the standardisation. The much recent electonic gadgets such as mobile phone initially used to have only text as the interface. Slowly mobile phone also became an arena where symbols have high visibility as well as high utility. It is not at all surprising to note that most of the modern day electronic gadgets have navigation paths facilitated by symbols and icons. This is against the general mis-conception that symbols and icons are only for illiterate. In these gadgets the symbols are not alone and they may also appear along with the text. The famous novel, later made into a movie, Davinci Code is also about symbols of old times. Thus it can be confidently said that symbols or icons continue to dominate human communication and action even though they are highly civilised and technical wizards.