The Design of Symbols

Have you ever thought about the Design of Numbers? I know I never did, until I read The Book of Nothing, by John D. Barrow. A few pages into the book, you suddenly realize how the design of Arabic numerals, and particularly, the invention of the sign "0", has taken us to where we are in this day in our understanding of the world. 

We have attempted to comprehend our reality for millennia through symbols. Whether they were numbers, words or even musical notes and pictographs. They allow the application of logic to a world that is often chaotic, where the default is randomness and chance.   

This invention has taken us far as a species. The graphic representation of things has managed to reduce the world into a manageable scale, helping us understand everything, from the density of space, to the (mis) management of financial markets.

Good symbols are ones that give an accurate reduction of reality, optimizing the noise to information ratio and opening the window for new ways of seeing and managing the world.

There are many other varieties of symbols apart from words and number: road signs, smiles, skylines, corporate logos, the profile of buildings, etc. We exist in a cultural pot filled with them and can not function optimally without their understanding. Our world is an interface for living, and they are there to help as navigate it.

A friend who now works for a big tech company designing user interfaces for their interactive digital products (and iPhone is an example), told me a bizarre story of how symbol illiteracy, or the fact that they did not take this into account, ruined an project. What had happened was somebody in their research lab had decided to put Virtual Reality and the Internet together with social welfare and terminally ill patients, and give them the ability to communicate with the outside world.

This was back in the 80's when most people were only used to DOS prompts and Pac Man. You can imagine a VR garden where you could make 3D models of plants with good-bye notes tagged onto them wasn't something most people would be able to do easily. Even now I still find programs that deal with 3D objects a bit of a challenge to navigate. The experiment failed because these people fell into plenty of technical problems and spent their last days trouble shooting their virtual garden. But I guess, at least it took their mind of things.

Who knows where we will go from here as a greater mass of people learn rapidly developing and changing logical frameworks that put symbols together, in both the physical and digital environment. New frameworks will be invented, our environment will be altered; and I guess there is always the dream of our crystallization eventually becoming one big neural network like they imagine it in Science Fiction.