Key Post: Emojis

Throughout history, man has always found out how to make things better and evolve. For instance, a fire was originally made by the striking of stone. Now we can create fire with the flick of a lighter switch. The same process goes for the emoji. 

If you look at the technology wall in Cottrell Hall, you’ll find 1979 credited with the first emoji. However, after my research, that date is only somewhat correct. Ever since typing became available, people have found a way to insert emotion-based signs. In fact, Abraham Lincoln once added a winking face ;) to a speech.

In 1979, legendary typographer Hermann Zapf developed an emoji library that wasn’t broadly successful, but certainly notable.

“Containing over a thousand designs for signs and symbols, the font was one of 35 PostScript fonts built into Apple's Laserwriter Plus, one of the first mass-market laser printers. Credited as helping to kick off the desktop publishing craze, the addition of Zapf Dingbats to the library of fonts available on the Laserwriter allowed anyone to print out symbols and simple images in their documents as efficiently as any other text, without sending more data to the printer,” Magenta.com reported about Zapf.

The first credited emoji list was actually made by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita in 1999. Kurita was played a role in the development team for “i-Mode,” an internet company produced by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier DOCOMO. Kurita wanted a more simple way to convey emotions and other information. One example he cited was making an emoji for weather patterns. Instead of saying “partly cloudy” in words, he envisioned programs displaying small pixeled emojis instead.

Kurita started by sketching 12-by-12 pixel images that he wanted to be selected from a keyboard grid. Sound familiar? The original character list included the sun, clouds, an umbrella, snowmen, a car, a tram, an airplane, a cell phone, TV, and GameBoy among other things, providing a variety of digital signs. 

With this new digital language established, the concept began to take off across Japan. Many developers made their own variety of emoji and by the mid-2000s, emojis were exploding globally.

In 2006, Google and Apple became increasingly interested in the emoji boom and set out to make the characters available in the USA. After a few years of working through Unicode, a universal coding platform, 625 emojis were made available for use in the states. Since then, Unicode has allowed other companies to use emojis as well due to their extreme popularity. 

While the Emoji hasn’t gotten any less popular, its change and regular updates have been the only thing keeping it relevant. Each new major iPhone update usually comes with an array of new emoticon features that are better designed than the last. Ask any teenager how often they use emojis and they’ll likely say at least once every three text messages sent. It’s a spectacular accomplishment to see the same 1979 feature of this ;) be just as popular now as this 😉. 

How many other modern technologies can you say have grown and evolved so much? 

Key Post: Speech Theories

In a recent class, we discussed the key speech theories and what each means to us. The list includes the marketplace of ideas, participation in self-government, stable change, individual self-fulfillment, check on government power, promoting tolerance, promoting innovation, and protecting dissent.  

We were then tasked with choosing a theory that means the most to us. With a list so stacked full of important concepts, it was difficult to pick just one. However, after digging into the list, my choice would be protecting dissent. 

In the United States of America, the First Amendment serves to protect our views, no matter any unpopularity among them. In fact, unlike many other countries around the world, the ability to speak out against the government is one of our most essential rights. It’s so essential that it is even encouraged and deemed a patriotic duty when our citizens make themselves heard. 

All that being said, it hasn’t been a cakewalk for America to abide by this freedom. In our past, we’ve seen examples of prior restraint, which directly goes against protecting dissent. For example, some parties have attempted and successfully stopped the production of material that could harm their image before its release.

In Near v. Minnesota (1931), Floyd Olson (county prosecutor, later governor of Minnesota) convinced a county judge to issue a gag order against two journalists. The journalists had written about accusations involving Olson and other politicians colluding with gangsters and planned to write more. The gag order was used to prohibit the journalists before they used their freedoms to write again. However, in the supreme court trial, a 5-4 decision was made deeming Minnesota violated the First Amendment. 

When looking for a perfect example of protected dissent, we have the fight for women’s suffrage. For years women were ready to have more responsibility than home care and in the early 1900s, things were boiling up. The government looked for petty crimes to silence these women but they could never outright take away their freedoms of speech, assembly, and peaceable protest. 

The right to protected dissent is exactly what kept the movement alive. Multi-colored women would gather from everywhere to deliver their patriotic duty by telling the government how they felt and what they wanted. As we know, in 1920 the government finally decided to pass the 19th amendment which granted voting rights to all law-abiding citizens, regardless of gender. The protests were very controversial and caused the women great pain, but their persistence proved we have a system of government that has to and will listen to its people.

In the midst of world chaos and confusion, it is very prevalent how necessary our protected dissent is in today’s society. Within the last year, we’ve seen people make themselves heard for what they believe in, and as a result, government action has been taken. This is how we take advantage of such a fundamental right, and this is why I feel it is one of our most important provided. If ever a time in which this right is stripped is a time in which our country will surely fall.