This week: what emojis are for, why Hillary lost, and why you should be suspicious of yourself. EMOJI POWER This is an interesting review of a couple of new books on emojis. I'm not anti-emoji (is being anti-emoji even a thing any more, or did they win?) but I think they're a sign of how inadequate our electronic media are when it comes to conveying the very rich information you get from even the briefest personal encounter. As the reviewer says, emojis are a form of "lossy compression", but much is lost. For me they point to a problem with the way we communicate today: an over-reliance on text, and short texts at that. Text is a very blunt, unfeeling, low-info medium, particularly on screens for some reason (it's why you have to boost the signal on emails by using exclamation marks you'd never use in print or handwriting). Strip out the subtle emotional cues that underpin face-to-face human interaction and the chances of people falling out gets higher. So we now have a global communication infrastructure primed for conflict. Anyway never mind, smiley face.
Please don't take my man
Please don't take my man
Please don't take my man
This week: what emojis are for, why Hillary lost, and why you should be suspicious of yourself. EMOJI POWER This is an interesting review of a couple of new books on emojis. I'm not anti-emoji (is being anti-emoji even a thing any more, or did they win?) but I think they're a sign of how inadequate our electronic media are when it comes to conveying the very rich information you get from even the briefest personal encounter. As the reviewer says, emojis are a form of "lossy compression", but much is lost. For me they point to a problem with the way we communicate today: an over-reliance on text, and short texts at that. Text is a very blunt, unfeeling, low-info medium, particularly on screens for some reason (it's why you have to boost the signal on emails by using exclamation marks you'd never use in print or handwriting). Strip out the subtle emotional cues that underpin face-to-face human interaction and the chances of people falling out gets higher. So we now have a global communication infrastructure primed for conflict. Anyway never mind, smiley face.