Smiley Lore :-)
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
History of Science and Technology Information Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: | Community - Blog |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): |
Scott Fahlman
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Department: Computer Science |
| Description: | History of the invention of the emoticon by its inventor Scott Fahlman. Excerpt: "After all, when using text-based online communication, we lack the body language or tone-of-voice cues that convey this information when we talk in person or on the phone. Various “joke markers” were suggested, and in the midst of that discussion it occurred to me that the character sequence :-) would be an elegant solution – one that could be handled by the ASCII-based computer terminals of the day. So I suggested that. In the same post, I also suggested the use of :-( to indicate that a message was meant to be taken seriously, though that symbol quickly evolved into a marker for displeasure, frustration, or anger. This convention caught on quickly around Carnegie Mellon, and soon spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day. (Some CMU alumni who had moved on to other places continued to read our bboards as a way of keeping in touch with their old community.) Within a few months, we started seeing the lists with dozens of “smilies”: open-mouthed surprise, person wearing glasses, Abraham Lincoln, Santa Claus, the pope, and so on. Producing such clever compilations has become a serious hobby for some people. But only my two original smilies, plus the “winky” ;-) and the “noseless” variants seem to be in common use for actual communication. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft and AOL now intercept these character strings and turn them into little pictures. Personally, I think this destroys the whimsical element of the original. So the message itself, and the thread that gave rise to it, are here. The exact date of the smiley’s birth can now be determined: 19 September, 1982. It was great to have this message back just in time for the 20th anniversary of the original post." |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Scott E. Fahlman, Scott Fahlman, Smiley Face, emoticon |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | Interesting history of technology and example of viral adoption of an IT innovation. |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
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