The Man Who Brought a :-) to Your Screen
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Engineering Computer Science General Engineering, Engineering Science History of Science and Technology Information Systems Information Technology Software Engineering |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Business Week, Olga Khariff |
| Description: | Business Week, April 23, 2001. Excerpt: "Scott Fahlman has seen his e-smile and frown spawn a form of online shorthand. But he never made a dime from it :( he year was 1982, and Scott Fahlman had grown tired of geeky scientists who never got the joke. A member of a vanguard group of computer experts involved in the earliest online newsgroups, the Carnegie Mellon University researcher participated in e-discussions on topics as diverse as abortion and campus parking. Many in the newsgroup, he found, had caustic senses of humor, but without the benefit of facial expressions or vocal cues to indicate irony, their sarcasm was sometimes mistaken for spite. So he proposed in a newsgroup that posters use a digital smiley face, :-), and a virtual frown, :-(, to clarify the tone of their messages. Fahlman was pleasantly surprised when participants began to use his "smiley" icons to denote emotive tenor. In the two decades since, the smiling and frowing icons have taken the e-world by storm. Now called emoticons, short for emotive icons, Fahlman's original sideways smiley face sparked the creation of thousands of variations. And they now go beyond expressing feelings, with symbols ranging from bawdy adaptations of Dolly Parton's cleavage to renditions of Dracula with an overbite. There are several emoticon dictionaries and a handful of academics who earn their keep studying the trend. " |
| Rating: |
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| Keywords: | smiley face, emoticon, Scott Fahlman |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | Interesting history of technology and case in viral adoption of an IT feature. |
| Difficulty: | Very Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2001 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.businessweek... |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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