What is an "icon"?

What is an "icon"?

Ethan Feerst and Dylan Stewart (Technology Therapist, Mac Guru) gives expert video advice on: What is a "search engine"?; What is the difference between "upload" and "download"?; What is "spam"? and more...

An icon is part of the experience of interacting with this graphical user interface that we're all used to now in this point and click world of operating a computer. Just like a three-year old, we get to point and say, "I want to do that," and we just get to point and click on that symbol. If we know what that symbol means then that symbol is the key to our understanding of what the computer's going to do for us if we click on that symbol. Sometimes that icon can just be a shortcut; it can just be a pointer, and that little symbol in itself doesn't really do anything except point to someplace else on the computer that does do something.