Emoji Gone Wild: We Text Without Words for a Month
Note to Self
WNYC Studios
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2014
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The more we access the web from mobile devices, the more visual our communications seem to become. Smartphone cameras enable us to express ourselves through the photos and videos we spread around on apps like Instagram and SnapChat. Meanwhile, a growing fleet of messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Line make it even easier to incorporate imagery in our casual communications. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are using them to speak to one another in emojis and digital sticker sets, a trend that has grabbed the attention of Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook and Google.
This week on New Tech City, we try to find out if these new visual communication tools are expanding how we can express ourselves and relate to one another. You'll hear from an illustrator who designs emojis and stickers about what he's trying to express when he draws a wombat taking a bath and drinking a glass of wine.
We'll also introduce you to several people who are testing the limits of visual communication:
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Data engineer Fred Benenson who oversaw a translation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into emojis, i.e. Emoji Dick;
Computational linguist Richard Sproat who explains the history of graphical languages in the plainest English imaginable, including the fascinating story of Charles Bliss's Blissymbolics;
And you'll join us on the endearing journey of New Tech City's own Alex Goldmark and his girlfriend as they banish text from their text message diet and try to communicate with only emojis and digital stickers (no words). It gets pretty intimate, and confusing.
(Image translation) Alex: I'm going home. Liza: I'm with a friend and she's had a death in the family, don't come to drinks with us. Alex: ? I'm gonna drink with other people instead.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friend. This is an episode of Note to Self, but from when we used to be called New Text City. Same good content. Just the old name. Enjoy. |
| 0:10.1 | Try adding a sticker right now. I'm gonna show you something new Alex. Meet Liza and Alex. Okay. |
| 0:15.7 | They've been together for almost two years. They live together and they're seeing if they're smart phones and some of the new tools on them. |
| 0:23.4 | Oh, those are adorable. Look at those pandas and chickies. Can improve their relationship. Strengthen their bond. |
| 0:29.4 | All right. Don't send me a broken egg. That one's really sad. Hi, it's minutia Marodi, the host of New Text City. |
| 0:35.8 | We don't want to build a hook-up app so you can find someone weird to talk to. It's not what we're about. |
| 0:42.2 | We're about your intimate relationships. And that is a dramatic reading of how the founder of WhatsApp describes his texting service that was, yes, bought by Facebook for about 19 billion dollars. |
| 0:57.2 | Now, it's just basically a text messaging service. But what WhatsApp does and all its competitors like line, vibrant kick. What they do is they let people speak one-on-one faster and on-the-go. |
| 1:11.0 | And a lot of times people aren't even texting words to each other. They're texting pictures. They're texting emojis. They're texting stickers, which are like virtual pictures of weird things as you're about to hear. |
| 1:25.8 | And so on this week's New Text City, we see if all these new visual tools are opening up doors for improving communication, especially for people who think visually. |
| 1:37.8 | I just fell in love with emoji immediately and I realized that it was exercising this part of my brain that I probably have more faculty with than just language. |
| 1:47.8 | So emojis, these little electronic smiley faces and animal faces that originated in Japan in the late 90s. And that's a guy who translated one of the greatest pieces of Western literature into all emoji characters. |
| 2:01.8 | You're going to hear about the visual forces that obsessed him plus a guy whose job it is to actually draw these pictures for messaging apps. |
| 2:10.8 | And these quick little moments, the imagery can be a lot more efficient. |
| 2:14.8 | We'll also talk to a computational linguist who can explain what's happening to our brains when we communicate with pictures. |
| 2:21.8 | If you look at the history of the development of writing systems, going back say to Egyptian, to Sumerian, to ancient Chinese, all of them started out with at least some components of pictures of things. |
| 2:32.8 | Okay, but let's start with our own Alex Goldbark. Hi, Alex. |
| 2:35.8 | Hi, I'm Anouche. Now, Alex, as New Text City senior producer, you are always game for one of my ridiculous challenges. |
| 2:41.8 | And for this show, you tried to completely eliminate words from your daily text messaging with your girlfriend, Liza. |
| 2:49.8 | Yes, and I am not a visual thinker. I'm a terrible artist. I can barely figure out where to put my name on a tax form. |
| 2:56.8 | But my girlfriend, Liza Stark, she is very affected by visuals. |
| 3:00.8 | She's a good artist. She arranged our bookshelf by color. |
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