I think icons can be arbitrary. That's because I've seen some that are so obviously idiosyncratic to the developer; they bear no relation to the function that

I think icons can be arbitrary. That's because I've seen some that are so obviously idiosyncratic to the developer; they bear no relation to the function that I can decipher. Some of them I can't even tell what the heck they are. "WTF is that supposed to be?" It's like your example of the floppy. It's a rectangle. It means save. Does it matter if no one even knows what the heck the icon is supposed to represent? If it's not intuitive? For the first few minutes perhaps until I figure out what the program it represents actually does it matters. Maybe it gives me a clue maybe not. From then on, once I figure it out, it's irrelevant. This is one of the 1001 reasons I think GUI's are a waste of time. I can just as easily tell a user to hit a particular key (i.e. a tactile button) or type "save". Goodbye ambiguity. Are icons metaphors? Or are they just symbols? I am not a linguist but I think that you may be stretching the definition of metapahor if you are thinking of icons as themselves being metaphors. What is an icon? A button with a superimposed symbol? Now, if you are saying buttons on a computer screen (which do not necessarily need any symbol superimposed on them to work) are metaphors for physical buttons, e.g. like your example of radio buttons, then that seems a little more reasonable. I've seen early TV remote controls, 8-tracks and various other old things having push-in buttons just like car radios. I'm not sure car radios were the first to have these. Maybe early radios, before TV, were the first to have push-in buttons (or whatever the proper name for them is)?