Keep smiling..

Exactly 26 years ago, on 19 September 1982, Scott Fahlman of CMU proposed the use of :-) and :-( as a way to convey emotions in running text. And suddenly email became rich. Then came the sms and it propelled the use of smileys to unforeseen heights. It was quite literally, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind...

OK, enough rant!! If you are bored already, here is the wired entry, which also has the text of Scott's original message. More to the point, I can see that my pidgin app has 83 builtin smileys. So we have much more 'expressive freedom' (is that the right phrase?) these days. The thing is, sometimes I have to hunt through the entire list to find the 'right one'. So increased creative freedom translates to more time spent using it, or so it seems.

It's hard to imagine life without smileys these days. IMHO, the immense popularity of IMs and their kin derives at least in part from such apparently small things. But don't overuse them. People don't like it. But that won't stop me from pointing out my favorite..


And yes, Keep Smiling..