An email came in the other day from the ninemsn people about emoticonworld.com.au and I kinda brushed it off. Yeah, yeah… emoticons. 10th anniversary of Windows Live… yada, yada. But then last night’s item about emo the meatspace emoticon surfaced and I thought to myself: “Self, a history lesson is in order”.
The emoticon used to be a much humbler character(s) than the cheesy, animated jobs that now populate too many emails and forum threads. They used to be, well, just useful, not annoying. And for a time, it was good. Then, when a fatter intertubes came along, the bandwidth-munching animated icon began to proliferate. Like rabbits. Calicivirus, anyone?
So, a little history is in order. Why? Perspective. And because those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. 😉 Oops. sorry.
The first person documented to have used the smiley and sad faces icons was Professor Scott E. Fahlman in 1982. And here’s the message:
However, he wasn’t the first to come up with a character-based shorthand. Teletype machine operators, as early as 1973, and probably long before that date, used “emoticons” to express themselves.19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman 🙂
From: Scott E FahlmanI propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
🙂
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:-(“
Feel the need to know more? Wikipedia has the full lesson.