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."


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