Showing posts with label Human expressions emoticons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human expressions emoticons. Show all posts

November 04, 2013

How symbolization and Iconization of human expressions pushing us back to Stone Ages?

It was relatively a difficult situation a couple of years ago - when mobile had stormed the telecommunications market - to express what exactly one was going through while texting the other person located miles away. Isn't it? Of course, it is. 

We had to type in various mathematical function keys to make up the expressions like happy ( :-) ) or unhappy (:-(). Gone were those days where we literally had to enter _/\_ these keys for simple gesture of Namaste.  

Back then, when mobile usage was still in its early days, creating emoticons wasn't that easy as one had thought of. One should got to have a lot of creativity to express their feelings through symbols. 


Intention with invention combined with permutation and combination along with logic - every calculative and creative aspect was considered to make the human expressions come alive while texting.

For example, colon, semicolon, comma, dash, individual use of parentheses brackets, underscore, greater than, lower than, and the symbol of by were used in combination to make human expressions such as happy, unhappy, sarcasm, kiss, winking. Expressions were symbolized.

Later, with the growing popularity of symbols the think tank of various mobile app creators had further expanded their creative ability to iconize the day-to-day mundane actions of a normal human being: reading, sipping coffee, jogging, listening to music, commuting, air travelling, etc.

One such beneficial action icon provider is Viber which offers almost a dozen of new action symbols with its each and every new version.  Nevertheless, the annoying factor over here is its routine remainders about app updation. Pretty good feature for younger generation who often get annoyed with routine questions from their loved ones. "where are you?" "what you doing?"

Though I personally admire these emoticons/action icons, what I am afraid of is the sense of loosing personal touch and the burgeoning sluggishness among the youth. The increased mobile usage had already impacted the human brain causing the latter's ability to remember things diminishing day by day. And with the impact of these icons and expressions, the ability to text - with proper spelling and punctuations - too, expected to be lessen. 

Gen Z, kindly be aware of the destruction just around the corner.  Our mental ability of remembering things, leading civilized and cultured life, the language and the letters may sound alien to us.

Going forth, it might even lead the entire human kind to settle down for Icon language as we did in stone ages: gesturing each action.


Find meticulously done Infograph (on some of such early-in emoticons and action icons) we have found on visual.ly. Kindly go through it.

On an ending note, we are opinionated on emoticons. If it differs with your opinion, we are open for conversation. Keep tracking us.