Fifty-two Icons for Storage
There is a famous quote found within Margaret Atwood’s (1972) Surfacing that proclaims, “The Eskimo has fifty-two words for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many words for love” (p. 107). The influential, albeit misunderstood, quote can partly be attributed to the work of anthropologist Franz Boas wherein he posits that a culture’s language shapes its perception of the world. A once seemingly religious regard for the validity of this claim has since been discredited, but its popular influence can still be felt within the public’s reception, and reverence, of Atwood’s famous quote. As many others have pondered—including Kate Bush within her recording of Fifty Words for Snow— It is interesting to speculate whether the number of synonyms for a word reflect the importance of that concept for speakers of that language. According to Atwood, if love were really important, within what is presumably some aspect of western culture, there should be numerous words, or synonyms, to express all the nuances of the word and concept, in a similar manner in which the Inuit have achieved with their fifty-two words for snow. Perhaps love is not important within western culture as there are not enough words approximating fifty-two types of love. Rather, the word in English with the most synonyms is said to be that for the process of getting drunk; we have: blitzed, bombed, tanked, buzzed, and the list goes on…. Other notable important concepts within western culture, as denoted by their number of synonyms, include words for food, money and sex. But still, attributing value to something, or recognizing the significance of a concept within a culture, doesn’t necessarily imply shaping the way one sees the world. All of the synonyms for being drunk are certainly a part of my lexicon but as a non-drinker, I don’t solely see the world through the lens of a culture that values alcohol; rather, I see it through a much smaller culture, within a predominant one, in which many, but certainly not all, place value upon the process of escaping reality by consuming an alcoholic drink. It certainly is possible to be a part of a culture and not have all of the same values and therefore not have your understanding of the world shaped in a similar manner.
Its interesting to ponder whether in other forms of representation, particularly digital ones, if there are concepts, or values, that are ubiquitously found within the texts produced by that culture. Looking at the graphical user interfaces of numerous digital applications, used extensively in western culture, it appears that storage is something that is valued. Even a cursory glance at previous means of textual storage reminds us that the desire to store the history of oneself or an entire civilization is not something entirely new. Storage has always been valued within the tradition of western personal, academic and commercial interests. From photo albums to libraries and ledgers, western culture is obsessed with storing information and treating it as a valuable form of property. However, not only is there a reverence for the material that is being stored, there is a similar reverence for the place in which it is produced. And again, this is nothing new: we have seen this in the remediation of the working environment, much like Bolter’s (2001) remediation of text, because of the evolution of digital technologies. Most GUI’s seemingly try to reflect both the values of the user and what is familiar to them. All one has to do is think of the GUI On Windows: it is a desktop with filing cabinets, folders, files and trash bins which seemingly reflect the western perception of the contemporary office as a powerhouse of efficiency and productivity. Such a GUI is obviously a cultural product stressing cultural values and practices. The New London Group (1996) suggests that, “…screen based-based modes of interacting with automated machinery [are]; ‘user friendly’ interfaces [that] operate with more subtle levels of cultural embeddedness than interfaces based on abstract commands” (p. 66). For example, many indigenous persons may be entirely ignorant of such icons, on the Windows desktop, and what it is that they represent. A file, or filing cabinet, may seem like a strange place in which to store one’s ideas, particularly if the vast wealth of one’s knowledge is not represented on paper. In fact, many indigenous cultures have knowledge that is deemed sacred so that is not to be shared by others and the prospect of having some means of storage that is separable from the soul of those that bear the knowledge would be almost a sacrilege. Traditional indigenous knowledge is kept alive by the oral traditions of such people.
It is no wonder then that so many cultures fear hegemonic western culture as their values, beliefs and way of life can be eclipsed by a more dominant one, not only through a preferred means of representation but by the technology that is used to produce the means of representation. Certainly, there is a relation to cultural values and language but there is also a relationship to cultural values and the technology that is used to help represent that knowledge. Indigenous persons may at one time have been taken aback with every application’s GUI illustrating a myriad of ways in which to store knowledge. Such a culture has never had a need to store knowledge in such a manner because all of their knowledge was once shared through traditions, stories and oral forms of communication. But, when working with the tools of another culture it is difficult to not adopt the lifestyle and values of another culture.
The cultural bias in iconography in the GUI of digital applications poses a unique problem for the modern producers of such programs: how does one attract an audience that would feel familiar and comfortable with such icons while not alienating those that would not? G. Kress (2005), has gone on to say, “each occasion of representation and communication now becomes one in which the issue of my relation to my audience has to be newly considered and settled on…Equally significant now is the aptness of fit between mode and audience. I can now choose the mode according to what I know or might imagine is the preferred mode of the audience I have in mind. This links directly to the crisis in both social framings and in representation: If I can no longer rely on convention to make my audience take information in modes that are not congenial to them, then questions of my relation to the audience have to become foregrounded” (p. 19). Perhaps it is such questions concerning Google’s relationship to its audience with it popular web browser Chrome that has forced the company to create a GUI that is as benign as possible primarily because of its lack of iconography. Icons, just like words, express concepts that can both attract and repel members of a culture. They can help remind one that they are members of a community and they can make others feel that they are outside the community.
Perhaps this is why Adobe’s Lightroom has forgone the familiar office icons denoting storage (such icons as textual files, cardboard file holders and filing cabinets). In Lightroom, an application for photographers, file folder icons—and the familiar stale and uninspired capitalist office motif– have been replaced by shoeboxes when the “creative” user is storing filter collections. In video games where driving is a significant aspect of the game, saving a game is not done by pressing an icon representing a floppy disk, it is often done, as in GTA V, by means of driving one’s car in the garage where upon one’s game is saved until the next time one wishes to hop back into the same car. So, while such examples circumvent the established office aesthetic, they certainly do not circumvent western culture’s propensity to save all things and store them as some piece of sacred private property. There seems to be an implicit assumption that the general public can not pilfer through one’s “shoeboxes” for photographs or explore one’s “garage” for a free ride. In western culture, digital property is seemingly just as private as geographical property and having a considerable portfolio, spread out on hard drives and the like, is seemingly not unlike that of having a portfolio of properties in real estate. Google may just be one of the most “valuable” companies on the planet because of how much information it has stored rather than how much of it they can use.
If language is really said to be alive it needs to be utilized in the lives of all citizens rather than stored in a box or a virtual filing cabinet. If text is the design of all human thought, it—just as all good design as noted by Don Norman—should have practical applications and affordances. Storing knowledge that is not being utilized, and is difficult, if not all together impossible to access, is far too similar to land speculation in real estate and civic planning. However, capitalism is built from the tenet that private property is indicative of wealth, privilege, and security whether this property be geographical or intellectual. Icons representing means of saving and storing text just reinforce this cultural value.
Sources:
Atwood, Margaret. (1972) Surfacing McClelland and Stewart
Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 32-46, 77-98.
Kress, Gunter. (2005). “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22.Retrieved, July 15, 2018, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92. Retrieved, July 18, 2018, from http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/multiliteracies_her_vol_66_1996.pdf
