Alien message: arrows and sequence order
This is part of my Alien Message series:
I recall a TV show featuring a discussion on the design of warning messages for deep time, the little cartoon had dots in each panel (â—, â—â—, â—â—â—) because if the read right-to-left they might think it depicts a place where skeletons can be brought back to life! However, this is not a satisfying answer to me, as the people might naturally count down a series of steps to a conclusion.
In Dragon's Egg, the characters remark on the Earthling's drawings, why are there chevrons on the pointer? It must be their way of drawing an arrow, they decided.
So, how can something like a flow diagram depict arrows indicating direction? The style of an arrow head and tail might be completely culture specific. My first thought was to label it with dots (â—, â—â—, â—â—â—) along the line, but that reminded me of the first problem I related.
How could you clearly depict directional arrows in an alien drawing?
Related: how to depict sequence in general, among a set of pages, diagrams, or figures? Even the "correct" orientation of the page is not known! (An answer to one can be used to solve the other.)
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/71048. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Introduce your sequence symbols temporally. Instead of broadcasting a single image of a "comic strip", broadcast a sequence of separate images that show the progression of the sequence markers. First image shows a single â—, pause, second image shows two â—â—, pause, third image shows â—â—â—, etc.
Then you can use that as an established sequence to build more abstract symbols on.
Eg.
→ â— â—â— â—â—◠→
↠â—â—â— â—â— â— â†
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