History of Emojis and Why they're Here to Stay

You always hear that history has a funny way of repeating itself- and the dan of emoticons is just another

example of human’s ability to reinvent and adapt, while always keeping in mind where they came from.

From writing hieroglyphics upon tomb walls in ancient Egypt to typing out emojis on a Facebook wall.

At the dawn of the internet, all content was entirely text-based; meaning between the 1960s and the

1990s all emoticons were rendered in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange,

a standard code sed by smaller and less-powerful computers) and could only be read sideways.

Super scientist Scott E Fahlman asserted that :-) could indicate “humorous” posts on message boards

and :-( could indicate “serious” posts. The primary went on to gain a reputation as the humble Smiley-

that recognition unfortunately not being equitable with its partner the Frowney.

As the 90s transitioned into the new millennium, emoticons became a personal experience of creating individualized emotions through different combinations of keyboard symbols. What were previously just various keys used for code or type now. Being used in intricate ways to express facial expressions.

Then finally comes the emoji. Emoji is a Japanese word that translates to English as “e” for “picture” and “moji”

for character- a very fitting name for the small creative pictures used in text exchanges. The first emoji was

created in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita, wanting to design an attractive interface to convey information

in a “simple succinct way.” Kurtia sketches 176 original 12 pixel by 12 pixel images

This influx of emoticon and emoji usage actually helps the way in which people communicate. The media richness theory is the idea that media has different levels of richness, i.e. the ability to understand the facial expressions and full range of emotion through a medium of conversation. For example, a phone call allows for people to hear vocal inflections but not see facial expressions during a conversation. Thus, emojis being inducted into everyday texting scenarios made a relatively shallow medium into one whose richness gets deeper with every new batch of emojis.

1] Augustyn, Adam. 2020. "ASCII | Communications". Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ASCII.

[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/emoticon

[3] https://www.thoughtco.com/emoticons-and-emoji-1991412

[4] https://www.thoughtco.com/emoticons-and-emoji-1991412

[5] https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/isre.9.3.256