An appoach to the use of sound in computer interfaces, proposed in this article, emphasizes the role of sound in conveying information about the world to the listener. This approach argues that auditory icons, i.e., caricatures of naturally occurring sounds, provide a natural way to represent dimensional data as well as conceptual objects in a computer system, and allow the categorization of data into distinct families using a single sound. Three kinds of mappings between data to be represented and its representation--symbolic, metaphorical, and nomic--are illustrated, and the learnability of mappings is considered. The technical feasibility of producing such sounds is also discussed. Supplemental materials include a list of 16 references and a list of 61 technical reports by members of the Institute for Cognitive Science. (MES)