Many of us who turn off the speaking of punctuation may miss these
symbols, but I found it interesting to learn the history of the emoticon.
Mr. Fahlman may be contacted at [log in to unmask]
from today's paper at http://www.postgazette.com
The face of e-mail:-)
CMU scientist who typed the first emoticon :-) in 1980 couldn't have
known how far it would go :-(
Sunday, December 20, 1998
By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
With chat room addicts locked in all-night debates on everything from
the color of UFOs to pet grooming, it was only a matter of time before
someone found a way for a computer to generate a yawn :-o
Carnegie Mellon University researcher Scott Fahlman, whose main
contribution to computer science are in the areas such as knowledge
representation, machine learning and artificial neural nets, is also
the man behind the smiley emoticon. (V.W.H. Campbell Jr. Post-Gazette)
Not to mention a symbol for the blabbermouth (:<<)
Or to say something isn't funny :-/ )
These creations, best viewed by tilting your head to the left, are
some of the hundreds of odd symbols, called emoticons, that have given
the Internet what it once lacked - a tone of voice.
Most of the millions of e-mailers who use them are unaware that their
origins can be traced back to a researcher at Carnegie Mellon
University.
Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist, doesn't put it on his resume. But
in a moment of whimsy back in 1980 he created a '70s-style icon from
the punctuation keys on his computer and shot it into cyberspace. The
symbol that he posted that day was a :-) or "smiley."
Emoticons: If you've ever wondered just how to tell your e-mail
friends exactly what you're feeling, well now you can. Above is a list
of numerous ways to express yourself and maybe some starters to
creating your own emoticons. (Post-Gazette)
E-mail hasn't been the same since.
Fahlman has gotten used to being contacted by reporters from as far
away as Finland who seem less interested in his serious research than
what he did with a few keystrokes.
He assures them he wasn't out to change the world, just to keep the
peace. Fahlman said he'd seen too many spats erupt among e-mailers on
campus who could neither see the facial expressions nor hear the voice
behind the words they received. So, in a posting on a campus
electronic bulletin board, he told his colleagues that a smiley placed
at the end of a stern-sounding note would soften its tone and signal
if the words were in jest.
"With e-mail, everyone assumes people are serious," said Fahlman, 50,
an expert on artificial intelligence who holds a doctorate from MIT.
"I wrote a post that said if you are going to say something that's not
meant to be taken seriously, you probably better mark it as a joke,"
he said. "It occurred to me as I was typing that the [smiley] was a
clever way to do it."
The scientist simply figured he'd found a way to keep a colleague's
wry sense of humor from mushrooming into an electronic brawl. "I never
dreamed that it would get beyond our little campus group," Fahlman
said.
He was wrong.
Emoticons, from artistic to obscene, now circle the globe.
On-line dictionaries chronicle them. They and the largely anonymous
authors who create them have even caught the attention of Madison
Avenue.
Last year, MCI WorldCom used them in a series of national TV ads to
portray itself as a technology company. One spot concluded with a
smiley and a message: "MCI. Is this a great time or what?" A second
spot that aired during the Super Bowl consisted of a series of
emoticons.
The company said it was confident the symbols were ready for prime
time.
"Emoticons have become the face of the Internet," said Brad Burns, the
company's director of communications.
In Russia, as tanks blasted away at the Parliament building and troops
fought in the streets, scientists found time to use smileys in the
e-mail they sent to reassure colleagues in the United States that they
were safe.
Some use emoticons such as :-[ to express anger, or :-( for a frown
and :>) to refer to someone who is nosy.
Other symbols are miniature works of art, among them +-(:-) for the
Pope, *<<-:-{{{ for Santa Claus cI:-= for Charlie Chaplin and =:-) for
a punk rocker.
A '- ) wink at the end of a message could mean the sender wants to
flirt.
As their visibility rises, so has a backlash. Some net surfers call
the symbols a poor substitute for precise writing. Others are just
sick of finding them in their mail.
A writer in the Village Voice questioned how much need existed in
normal conversation for symbols such as an abstracted asparagus
>>>>>:=========== or a caricature of Zippy the Pinhead =:-)x.
Donovan White, a West Townsend, Mass., computer consultant and
self-described smiley hater, goes even further.
He calls their popularity proof that "the world is full of idiots." He
suggested in jest that there ought to be a Society to Stamp Out
Smileys.
"They're unnecessary. It's like people who pepper their conversation
with the phrase 'quote unquote.' They're annoying," said White, who
expressed little patience for e-mail that contains them. "My
assessment of the intellectual power of the author goes down a notch
or two."
But others argue that if symbols help make the point, there's nothing
wrong with using them.
"It gives people more access to their creative mind. I think they can
complement writing," said Marjorie Ford, an English lecturer at
Stanford University.
She wondered if some who complain about emoticons simply feel
threatened by a form of expression they have not mastered.
"People who are articulate and have plenty of time to think about what
they are writing don't need smileys. But e-mail is used for fast
conversation back and forth," said Sara Kiesler, a professor of social
decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon. "I consider myself a good
writer, but I use smileys from time to time - mostly with friends."
Fahlman can only smile at how far the little creations have gone.
As a boy growing up near Akron, Ohio, he was fascinated with robots
and once dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But by high school,
computers had captured his eye.
"When John Glenn went up, it became obvious to me that he was the
cargo," Fahlman said. "It was the computers that were flying the
thing."
Fahlman, who joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty two decades ago, is a
principal research scientist in the department of computer science. He
has worked in such artificial intelligence areas as knowledge
representation, machine learning and artificial neural nets. The
official description of his research says he "may be best known among
his peers for development of the quickprop and cascade-correlation
learning algorithms for neural networks" - to which one is tempted to
add, :-)
Fahlman is on partial leave from the university while serving as
president and chief technical officer of Just Research, a 25-person
lab created by Justsystem, a Japanese software company
The new Hacker's Dictionary mentions Fahlman as part of its section on
emoticons. It says that while there are hundreds of them, only a few
are commonly used.
"I wish I had saved the original post, or at least recorded the date
for posterity," he told the publication. "But I had no idea that I was
starting something that would soon pollute all the world's
communication channels."
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
|