I'll try to respond to all, having not much time outside my main concerns, sorry.
Indeed I agree that there are limits to the automatization of interhuman communication. In practice, whenever we are in contact with one another, the use of natural language is preferrable. Emoticons and other pictographs IMHO are intended to complete what written language cannot express in a reasonably little number of words, or for ready orientation. When at a moment or another we fall back to natural language, using this from the beginning on seems more efficient. My bad idea about responding to an invitation by a set of nutrition constraint pictographs ends up to rather prepare a predefined message in every language we're expecting invitations in. About reading packaging information, it might not be enough to avoid allergens, we should pay attention to the presence of palm oil because of the useless devastation of primates' habitats while enough fallow land exists in a concerned country for palm oil production until 2050, just as an example of how food choices are complex and need thorough awareness of numerous parameters, far beyond allergens, regardless of how life threatening these often are. Moreover, the lives of everybody on earth are threatened by imminent climate change (please see http://avaaz.org/en/ too). The Babel issue about how to communicate in language confusion might soon be resolved, if there is no more communication at all... Best regards, Marcel Schneider
