Smiley's People (essay)

"Smiley's people" is an essay by Neal Stephenson that appeared in The New Republic on September 13, 1993, on the subject of emoticons or "smileys".[1][2] The title of the article is an allusion to the John le Carré novel, Smiley's People. The article contends that the popular use of emoticons in online communication lowers the quality of the written word.[3] While Stephenson has since recanted this view,[4] there remain many others who agree with his original assessment citing the general lack of written sophistication in modern public online communication (a theme Stephenson revisited in his 2008 novel Anathem).

When I was younger I wrote an opinion piece for The New Republic in which I denounced smileys (symbols like this :) ) and the people who used them in e-mail, including Scott Fahlman, who invented them. ...For the record, I no longer agree with my own smileys editorial of 1993...

— Neal Stephenson, "Smileys: Fahlman 1, Stephenson 0"
For the John le Carré novel, see Smiley's People.

References
  1. "Smiley's People". The New Republic. September 13, 1993. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  2. Pavlik, J.V. (1996). New Media Technology and the Information Superhighway. Allyn and Bacon. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-205-16300-7. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  3. Hunsinger, J.; Klastrup, L.; Allen, M. (2010). International Handbook of Internet Research. SpringerLink: Springer e-Books. Springer Netherlands. p. 48. ISBN 978-1-4020-9789-8. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
  4. Stephenson, Neal (October 18, 2003). "Smileys: Fahlman 1, Stephenson 0". nealstephenson.com. Archived from the original on October 18, 2003. Retrieved May 16, 2018.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.