The Web Smiley Turns 25 - Plus a Full List of Emoticons

I remember when I was around nine years old and my family got their first computer, and we were one of the first on our street to have AOL and all the joys that came along with it. What an exciting time in our lives, we were on the brink of the new technological revolution and we were running head first to it! And as I remember sitting in the comfortable brown chair, in front of the mammoth screen, and listening to the singing of the modem, I waiting in utter anticipation for the flow of information that would come to me. However, it was something else that caught my attention. It was several very small Emoticons that you could put in the body of e-mails and such. I thought, "what a cool a new thing!" Little did I know that people have been using these Emoticons since September of 1982, when Schott Fahlman, who is a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science, began writing the symbol J in the subject line of an online bulletin board to allow everyone to know that the message was not of serious nature.

Scott Fahlman was recently interviewed by c|net online concerning these "new" emoticons, and he stated, "Originally, people were using these because it was some cool thing and it showed that you were a real expert user of the Internet, that you knew the secret language." How far have we come since then, however, I still remember using all of these "secret" symbols to communicate with my friends, and there truly was a sense of secrecy and elatedness that would wash over you as your show your friends how excited you were. In all honesty, the Emotions are a great innovation, as when you are writing someone an e-mail or an instant message through AIM, it is hard to be sarcastic because the reader does not know the tone of your voice. Thus, using these small symbols could suggest that you aren't serious, and allowing the reader to fully understand you. These Web Smiley's are far more than just symbols, they are a mean of communication for a new generation.