iconography
An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages
An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages. There's a reason why humans invented phonetic languages.
A universal correspondence
In 1923 Kandinsky proposed a universal correspondence between the three elementary shapes and the three primary colors: the dynamic triangle is inherently yellow, the static square is intrinsically red, and the serene circle is naturally blue.
The series ▲■● represents Kandinsky’s attempt to prove a universal correlation between color and geometry; it has become one of the most famous icons of the Bauhaus. Kandinsky conceived of these colors and shapes as a series of oppositions: yellow and blue represent the extremes of hot/cold, light/dark, and active/passive, while red is the intermediary between them. The triangle, square, and circle are graphic equivalents of the same polarities.
BeOS Icons
Rethinking Twitter Verification
An Article by Terence EdenThe main problem, I think, is that no one knows what "Verified" means.
If I were in charge (which I'm not) there would be various types of ticks.
🤖 is a bot
🆔 proved their legal identity
🏭 is run by a brand
⚖ is run by a government department
👮 Official law enforcement
😎 CelebrityAnd so on.
What happened when I stopped using Emojis
An Article by Clo S.In March 2021, I went through a fun self-imposed experiment: no emoji for 2 weeks. Not on social media, not in private messages, not even as Slack or Discord reactions. No emoticon either: the goal was to communicate without illustrations, only with words. I did a semi-rigorous (a.k.a. half-assed) diary study, taking notes on my feelings and behaviour.
The Evolution and Fate of Botanical Field Books
To serve as a reminder
Looking back at my notebooks now, the information seems fairly sketchy, often abbreviated, and fairly uninformative. The purpose was merely to serve as a reminder for when, that evening, I would write up my notes in a proper field book.
Sterile creatures
Now that we are in the era of personal computers, traditional field books are being replaced by computer files. By default such “field books” are sterile creatures—all the words are spelled properly, the location data are exact to a matter of a few feet, and everything is properly formatted. In the spring of 1998, I penciled my last entry into my signature field book with the bright orange cover. Thereafter I have maintained a computer-based field book.
Oh, all the right stuff is there, clear, crisp and, well, dull… I tend to be overly particular about it—the format has to be right, everything properly spelled, the descriptive sequence in the proper order, and even the observations drafted with the final publication in mind (rather than what I happen to see at the moment). The emotions of finding something new, once mentioned in my handwritten field books, are now missing, as if my mental editor says “no, that is not proper for a scientific journal.”
Further and further away
In looking over my own forty-five years of keeping a record of plant specimens, I find that I am personally moving further and further away from the words I generate, becoming more aloof and separate from the experience of the actual event of collecting, concentrating instead on the precision of where and when. It is merely record keeping for the sole purpose of giving the facts.
With the decline of letter writing and the sterilization of field books, what we are losing is the individual. Field books are like letters that are replaced by often ephemeral emails. I fear that as we move further into the computer age we will similarly lose the detailed historical record that field books once provided. Sadly, the personalities of botanists will also be lost, for such musings as might be found in a field book are often telling to those wishing to know more of the past.