Emoji: How Japanese Pager Icons Became a Global Digital Language

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named a picture its word of the year: the face with tears of joy. The choice makes sense once you see what typing strips away, which is tone of voice, facial expression, and posture. The fix began in 1982, when computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed a sideways smiley as a joke marker on university message boards. Japanese phone companies then turned the idea into tiny 12 by 12 pixel pictures, well before the designer who usually gets the credit.

This episode follows emoji from those carrier-specific icons, where a wristwatch sent on one network could arrive as a convenience store on another, to the day Apple and Google pressed the Unicode Consortium for a single standard, accepted in 2010. It explains why the same emoji still looks different on every phone, how culture and courts read these symbols, and how skin tones and family groupings are assembled from hidden code.

Shigetaka Kurita's 176 icons for Docomo in 1999 hang in the Museum of Modern Art, but SoftBank shipped a set in 1997, after Sharp in 1988 and NEC in 1990.
Corporate investment in emoji support forced better Unicode systems overall, which improved digital support for historical, indigenous, and minority languages.
In 2016 Apple turned its pistol into a green water gun just as Microsoft swapped its toy ray gun for a realistic revolver. By 2018 the major vendors had adopted the water gun.
Linguists class emoji as a paralanguage that works like hand gestures, which is why people stack three laughing faces but never repeat a word three times.
A family emoji is several characters fused by an invisible zero-width joiner, and pressing backspace once splits it back into individual people.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(16184)

The Art of Adult Friendship: Why Quality Matters More Than Quantity

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore how our understanding of friendship changes as we grow old...

9 Nov 18min

Summer Explained: The Science, History, and Traditions of the Warmest Season

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore summer, the season most closely associated with sunshine, ...

7 Nov 18min

Sir Patrick Stewart: From Shakespeare to Star Trek, the Life and Legacy of a Legend

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the extraordinary life of Sir Patrick Stewart, the acclaim...

7 Nov 49min

Larry David: The Genius of Social Awkwardness, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and career of Larry David, the comedian, writer, ...

6 Nov 38min

Why Australian Shepherds Aren't From Australia

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the history of the Australian Shepherd, an intelligent, en...

5 Nov 45min

Labrador Retriever: From Newfoundland Fishing Dogs to Modern-Day Heroes

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore the remarkable history of the Labrador Retriever, one of t...

4 Nov 53min

Discovering Ireland: A Journey Through History, Culture, and the Wild Atlantic Way

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In this episode of pplpod, we explore Ireland through the philosophy of slow travel: go slower, ...

3 Nov 48min

Willie Hutch: An Overnight I'll Be There Lyric and The Mack's Soundtrack

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!William McKinley Hutchins was born in Los Angeles in December 1944 and raised in Dallas, where h...

2 Nov 21min