Join us on a time-traveling adventure spanning 5000 years, tracing the history of human communication from ancient hieroglyphics to the modern era of emoji. 📜🌐
Who doesn't love a good time-travel story? 😉🚀
Journey thru History 🕰️
Communication has always been a part of human nature. People have used all sorts of methods to communicate - gesticularly (with gestures), orally, artistically, and visually. We desire to be seen and heard, to belong. 🤝
Throughout the annals of time, humans have been particularly drawn to visual communication, a way to preserve our communication. From the intricate hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt to today's versatile emoji, our quest for expressive symbols to share our thoughts and ideas, has been a constant presence in our history. Let's dig into how this has evolved from hieroglyphs to our more modern emoji expressions. 🔗
Simplifying Complexity 😊
Consider the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" – an intricate symbol requiring multiple lines and curves. It was still a symbol that had to be interpreted, it was not a real-world representation of a house. Compare it to the modern emoji depiction of a "house" – a simple, universally understood image of a dwelling with a roof and a door that houses humans. 🏠
When a person sees a house emoji, they know what it means, no matter where they are from, where they live or what their background is. That is what it means to universally understand. Born in the digital age, emoji distill complex ideas into a delightful simplicity that defies boundries. 🗺️
Evolving Expressions 💡
As we travel the timeline, it becomes clear that while both glyphs and emoji serve the same core purpose—visual communication—emoji have evolved to be more precise, expressive, and versatile. Glyphs were often tied to specific words or concepts, while emoji span a spectrum of emotions and ideas, enriching our ability to communicate with more nuance.
Our modern communications technology also allows groups of people to co-opt emoji for alternate usage, aka "slang." There might have been slang hieroglyphs, but that symbol language is not robust, nor is ancient technology robust enough to easily share the joke with us.
Today's technology, on the other hand, is not only robust enough to give us a skull 💀 that indicates something is "funny" in sort of slang "I'm dying laughing" way, but also the ability to have the Internet weigh in to tell me I'm wrong and that indeed somewhere in history there are hieroglyph jokes. Surely, there's an ancient 🍆 eggplant or peach 🍑 somewhere.
The Internet is enormously helpful that way. 🤷♀️😆
Full Circle? 🔄
In many ways, it seems we have come full circle on our pictograph journey. Both hieroglyphs and emoji allow us to communicate without words, bridging language gaps and fostering connection over images. Yet, emoji represent a more modern and adaptable form of visual language, with a clearer, more literal representation of ideas. And a wider language set of options that is continually growing. We do not always have to use words with emoji, but we do. Emoji enrich our words, and our communication overall.
Examples of Evolution 🖼
- Ancient Egyptian "water" glyph is a black wavy line vs. modern water emoji (💧)
- Ancient Chinese "tree" pictogram is a black symbol of a plant with roots extending down vs. modern tree emoji (🌳)
- Ancient Mayan "sun" glyphs are varied ornamental images
- vs. modern sun emoji (☀️)
Glyphs often have varied interpretations, making emoji's universal appeal an incredible achievement overseen by the Unicode Consortium.
The Living Language of Emoji 🌈
Emoji continue to evolve, with new additions to the Unicode Standard set each year. This dynamic nature reflects the vibrancy of emoji and their adaptability to ever-changing global communication needs. 🌍
Emoji IRL - Beyond the Screen 💬
In today's hybrid world, emoji have transcended the digital world and entered our daily lives. We no longer live in a solely digital world—it's a fully hybrid one. From the much loved heart hands to mimicking the "exploding head" emoji with their hands, people now use emoji IRL to convey emotions, often with a touch of sarcasm or humor to showing love and compassion. Even expressions like ROFL and crying face are spoken as words to convey emotion. Emoji have become part of our IRL language patterns, thus they are not just a digital language, they are a rich, hybrid language. Emoji usage in our world continues to evolve, bridging the gap between the digital and real worlds, proving how hybrid we actually are. 🌐
Bridging Cultures 🌉
Emoji serve as a universal language, transcending cultural boundaries. Whether you're sharing a 👍 for approval or a 😊 for happiness, your message is understood worldwide. This is one of our greatest achievements as a society, and it opens the door to countless possibilities for connection.
Emoji Statistics 📊
Did you know?
- 90% of all online messages contain emoji (Emojipedia, 2023).
- 73% of Americans use emoji in their text messages (Pew Research Center, 2015).
- 92% of Internet users aged 16-24 use emoji (Global Web Index, 2023).
- 50% of all social media posts contain emoji (Sprout Social, 2023).
- Ads featuring emoji enjoy 33% higher brand awareness and 18% higher click-through rates (Nielsen, 2016).
The "Why" 🤔
In the grand tapestry of human progress, the question of "why" has always been a relentless driving force in my world. So, I have asked "why emoji?" Why this unique form of visual expression?
Universal Desire 🌟
At the heart of our existence lies a profound desire to express ourselves and to be understood. Over time, we've left behind oral histories (as a mainstream practice to preserve history and legacy), as these narratives are fallible and open to interpretation. Written content offers more clarity and a higher likelihood of conveying our true meaning and message.
As we have "perfected" that over time and with advancing technologies, we have naturally progressed our exploration of how to communicate. We have moved to global, instant communications, digital media, and many forms of arts and communications. We are in an age of exploring these new forms of communications, art, media, and how we want to share our thoughts, ideas, emotions using this "power."
Internet and media languages like music, emoji, and even memes and gifs - things that unite people with powerful shared moments and experiences are something we are newly experiencing as people, communities, society - a world. It is something we are learning how to wield and master. It is still a relatively young communications power we are adapting to as a planet of billions - 92% of whom have mobile phones. It's unprecedented connectivity for our planet. 🔗
The Power of Emoji Expression 💬
In this ever-evolving communication landscape, emoji have emerged as a potent communications medium. They transcend language barriers and convey complex emotions within a single symbol. As they bridge communications gaps between the digital and real worlds, pioneers are exploring different ideas, mashups, applications, and solutions with emoji.
Emoji Expression - Connecting Humans 🌐
At Emoji Expression, our goal is to encourage the exploration and celebration of the world of emoji and those that would pioneer new ideas, inspiration, creativity, and innovation. We love connection tech, ideas, and art and the idea that every emoji tells a story and bridges the gap between cultures and generations.
Amazing to think of what emoji (or ideas or art or anything with passion behind it) can do, isn't it? 🤯
Resources 📚
Ready to dig deeper into the world of emoji? Here are some resources:
- Emojipedia - Your emoji encyclopedia
- Unicode Emoji - The official source for all things emoji - and THE place to go to sponsor an emoji (super cool!)
- Emoji Kitchen - Create your emoji mashups - so much fun!
- #GetYourMojiOn - Express yourself your way with customizable Moji Pop Art on wearables, bagables, stickables, drinkables, postables, and limited-edition jewelry and LED plaques
- Moji Musings - The Emoji.Express blog exploring the rich world of emoji creativity, inspiration, and innovation
Stay Inspired 🌈
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Cheers,
Chief Moji Muser and EmojiIRL™ Creator
#emojiexpression #emojiIRL #getyourmojion
☮️🖖❤️😊
