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. Jef Raskin, Steve Jobs iconographysymbols
From hands to machines It has rarely proved practical to produce exactly the same product by machines as we produced by hand. Mechanization requires you produce an equivalent product, not identically the same one. Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn The Nature and Art of WorkmanshipThe Real World of Technology