I’m thinking about emoticons today, and how I use them. Many years ago I was chatting on an IM thread on a website and my correspondent used three ☺ ☺ ☺ in a row in response to something I’d shared. At the time, I wondered: Why not one? And when I felt into it, three said “more.” One emoticon for a certain level of feeling, three, for a presumably higher-level of feeling. It reminded me a bit of when I briefly studied Indonesian language and learned that pluralizing in Indonesian involves repeating the word: Mangga = mango. Mangga mangga = mangoes
What struck me about this is that icons can sometimes behave differently than words do, and sometimes, similarly. I mean, I would never, ever, ever suggest that repeating a word in English can’t change its intensity level or alter its signification!
That said, working these new significators into a text conversation that has both words and icons can open the door to what one might call an “emoticonography” in which emoticons and other graphic elements in context, singly or repeated, sequenced and clustered, ultimately start to take on their own “emoticommunication” patterns unique to the user, complete with “emoticonnotations” that may start to register with people, even those outside the conversation. In other words, it has the potential to be a new form of language.
I find this concept exciting. That said, at the beginning of this era, I’m talking 20+ years ago now when I first found online forums on various topics and then engaged in communication with people I’d never met before and saw my first ☺ ☺ ☺, I certainly wasn’t thinking: “Jeez, these tech companies are probably tracking what we’re saying.” The “two-way mirror effect” of modern telecommunications was simply not part of my thought process at the time. The trajectory that eventually led us to a place where we would voluntarily tether ourselves 24/7 to a monitoring and tracking device, where we wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving home without it, where we’d experience high-level anxiety if it went missing and at times literally be lost without it – that wasn’t on my radar.
Back then, like most of us, I was just like, “Wow, this is cool!” I suppose many people still feel “Wow! Cool!” That said, I’ve noticed that the days when people camp in tents outside big box stores and talk to reporters while waiting to get the latest iteration of a smart phone seem to be behind us.
But here’s the thing, beginning with those first ☺ ☺ ☺ and the connection I established with someone who was nursing her husband through the final stages of prostate cancer hundreds of miles away, all the way up until I got my first flip phone where friends and family sent things like:
<3 ;-) :-) :-D :-b
and sometimes even
:-*
…it was never the technology that was magical. Not really.
I remember once receiving a:
:-*
and replying: “Those land, you know.”
But that kiss on the cheek (I was pretty sure that’s where it landed) really “landed” because of who it came from and how it was positioned within that particular communication, which itself was positioned within the larger pattern of ongoing conversations with a well-established connection on both sides.
All of that is very “old tech”. That, I am certain, we can rely on.
Similarly, I noticed that when one person sent me a:
:-D
…it wasn’t the same as when anyone else did. It seems that everyone has their own
:-D
…just as they do in person. The symbols look identical, but somehow they land different. And that’s pretty amazing to think about, really. It points to a completely different locus of power in the human-technology relationship.
Consider a person sitting alone in a chair, eyes trained down, smiling, hearing voices and even whole conversations in her head, sometimes giggling in amusement, other times grimacing in horror… or anything in between.
And now consider: that person is engaged in what we call “reading a book.”
Likewise consider how radio listeners can provide the picture, or black-and-white moviegoers supply the color. It’s never really about the technology. It’s always about what we bring to it as humans. It’s the old tech that keeps the new tech relevant and makes it come alive, not the other way around. And if we’re honest with ourselves, if we took that “old tech” out of the mix, in the longer term there’s not much going for the electronic stuff. It’s just another product, destined for obsolescence and landfilling.
I guess where I’ve written myself to here is helping me to stand in renewed wonder, delight and awe of the human capacity for creative signification and connection. Waking up to that renewed sense of wonder is exciting. On the other hand, the devices we’ve been conditioned to be excited about are not so exciting for me at this point, even though I’m currently tapping the keys of a 12-year-old laptop and remain grateful for its reliable service.
The device doesn’t give me the words or ideas, though. The real magic, the magic of inspiration, awareness, connection, intimacy and wonder is always within and between people. So let’s put first things first. Let’s not get distracted. We could strip all this technology away and our magic would still be there, simply because it’s ours.
