Posted by
TheBean on Monday, December 29, 2008 1:50:35 PM
When Gutenberg and the Phoenecians invented text in 1439, communication was not for the slouch. Books were written in ghastly fonts, and had to contain information of critical importance to inveigle the largely illiterate public into digesting them. Letters were carried by very cold people on very tired horses over very long distances. When something was said, it was said at great length.
In 1775, when Alexander Graham Bell introduced "e-mail", conciseness became an option. "E-mail" had no standardized length, and there was no reason to draw out what could be quick.
With the advent of Twitter, communication was raised to hitherto unimaginable heights of punchy virtuosity. Twitter's tweaks are limited to the tune of a couple of hundred characters, self-focused, and directed at no one in particular. Brevity is the soul of wit.
In light of this progression, I propose that there be a new website devoted entirely to this sort of personal status feed (preferably with a one-syllable name to save time) that presents each individual's feelings with a single screen-filling emoticon.
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