4 ms·

Emojis solve the problem of texting being inefficient at the expense of ceding a lot of the expressiveness to someone else. Suddenly committees are deciding wha

Emojis solve the problem of texting being inefficient at the expense of ceding a lot of the expressiveness to someone else. Suddenly committees are deciding what you mean. Turns out that for a lot of people, thats fine.

WalterBright 5y ago
> committees are deciding what you mean Not any different from using the alphabet and words.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  Very different, in fact. Yes, language is socially and culturally determined, but it is incredibly organic and expressive. A small counsel of people deciding which emotions can be expressed, and how, is entirely different. 1984 taught us the dangers of a limited and/or artificially created vocabulary. Are the lessons not the same today?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    People impute alternate meanings to words all the time. Such as "nasty" being flipped to meaning "cool". There's nothing constraining people from using emojis to mean things different from what they are defined to be. For example, the wallstreetbets subreddit has their own local meanings for various icons. Note that all alphabets started out as emojis. The vocabulary was, of course, very limited, and the emojis gradually got shortened, simplified, and turned into a sound, then stringing the sounds together meant a rich set of words could be formed. Did you know that the letter 'A' was originally a picture of a bull's head?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    It's like the internet method to convey body language
  - duckmysick 5y ago
    Many languages have small counsels of people that act as an authority on their vocabulary and usage. The French Academy, for example, has 40 members.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      We need a committee for the English Language to come up with new words that express common phenomena for which we don't currently have words. Like, for instance, the action of searching one's self for keys and phone before changing locations. Or a word for people who stare at their phone too often in social situations.
- xdennis 5y ago
  The current letters weren't engineered to remove the ability to say something, as with emojis. There have been political changes to dictionary entries, but most languages have many dictionaries and nobody can actually force you to change meanings or not use words you want to use. With Unicode, there's a single global entity that decides everything.

WalterBright 5y ago

> committees are deciding what you mean Not any different from using the alphabet and words.

sebmellen 5y ago
Very different, in fact. Yes, language is socially and culturally determined, but it is incredibly organic and expressive. A small counsel of people deciding which emotions can be expressed, and how, is entirely different. 1984 taught us the dangers of a limited and/or artificially created vocabulary. Are the lessons not the same today?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  People impute alternate meanings to words all the time. Such as "nasty" being flipped to meaning "cool". There's nothing constraining people from using emojis to mean things different from what they are defined to be. For example, the wallstreetbets subreddit has their own local meanings for various icons. Note that all alphabets started out as emojis. The vocabulary was, of course, very limited, and the emojis gradually got shortened, simplified, and turned into a sound, then stringing the sounds together meant a rich set of words could be formed. Did you know that the letter 'A' was originally a picture of a bull's head?
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's like the internet method to convey body language
- duckmysick 5y ago
  Many languages have small counsels of people that act as an authority on their vocabulary and usage. The French Academy, for example, has 40 members.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    We need a committee for the English Language to come up with new words that express common phenomena for which we don't currently have words. Like, for instance, the action of searching one's self for keys and phone before changing locations. Or a word for people who stare at their phone too often in social situations.
xdennis 5y ago
The current letters weren't engineered to remove the ability to say something, as with emojis. There have been political changes to dictionary entries, but most languages have many dictionaries and nobody can actually force you to change meanings or not use words you want to use. With Unicode, there's a single global entity that decides everything.