The : -) is 25; inventor tells how it was born

[Humpty]

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the infamous sideways smiley emoticon, invented by Scott E. Fahlman, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In an interview, reporter Lara Fritzsche discovered why Fahlman is > about the newfangled knockoffs that his creation inspired.

Question: You're the inventor of "smiley faces," which are used all over the world to declare things funny. Did you get that idea because nobody understood your jokes?

 

Answer: Yes, in a way. But not because my jokes were that horrible, it's - as we all know - difficult to identify sarcasm or cynicism, particularly in written words. Some people aren't able to do that in real life; on the Internet, it's even more tricky. . . .

 

When my colleagues and I started to use the Internet to communicate, it wasn't a public place. Small groups of working professionals met in bulletins - today's newsgroups - to discuss weighty matters of the day. Naturally, a good many of the posts were humorous.

 

The problem was that if someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke, and each of them would post a lengthy diatribe in response. That's how scientists are. In at least one case, a humorous remark was interpreted by someone as a serious safety warning.

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[craigathus]

Good 1 Humpty

I learn something every time I visit "Piriform Forums" :-)