Did you know that 25 years ago, at 11:44am on September 19, 1982 Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman posted the first recorded instance of the smiley emoticon to an online electronic bulletin, during a discussion about the limits of online humour and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly. You might like to check out the original message at CMU site along with some reflection from Scott Fahlman himself.
In another serendipitous moment only today I was excitedly approached by Doug to see if I had read his latest page. Apologizing for not having done so I loaded Doug’s Page to find it full of smiley’s, albeit modernised versions. This got me thinking a little on how generations even in this computer age still, (though with increasing speed), adopt, adapt and then discard the markers of the time. Taken in this context, 25 years is quite the best reason for celebration for the ubiquitous little smile.
If you are interested in pursuing the smiley bit a little more I was interested to read the CNet news reflection on smiley’s and their future and if like Doug you are fascinated by them then you might like to peruse the complete list of Yahoo emoticons.
