The Internet sure is full of misinformation. MSNBC misreports that Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman invented the electronic smiley :-) 25 years ago. Emoticons much more sophisticated than that, but including good ol' :-), were in use on the PLATO system in the '70's. With a monospaced non-ASCII character set that let you backspace and overtype, PLATO users were armed with a vast array of complex smileys.The Register corrects MSNBC's report. Some PLATO samples are here.
2 comments:
Yes, well, people seem to have forgotten all about the 1970s PLATO advances. Case in point: Avatar as a multi-player on-line game with a real economy that suffered inflation from the sale of artifacts. Yet we continually hear how today's MMRPGs are the first to explore such "new" frontiers. Poppycock.
Real history is too hard. Revisionist history is much easier, just watch Fox News..
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