Emoji.
The Language of the Future?

the Egyptians, Sumerians and Chinese used pictograms (graphic Icons) or ideograms (Graphic Ideas) in earlier forms of their writing. Many of the phonetic alphabets came from these proto-languages. Thousands of years later we are still using pictograms to navigate traffic:

Recognize which bathroom to go to:

Or know where our dogs are discriminated against:

But there is another set of Pictograms that for the past fifteen years has been revolutionizing the way we communicate with each other. The first Emoji is said to have been created between 1998–1999, and since then the world has readily adopted this new way to communicate. I hardly have a text conversation without using some emoji. Even my mom, who is very close to being a technology illiterate sends me hearts through our painfully slow texting conversations.

Recently Emojis are starting to creep into our art. Consider the work of Carla Gannis who is reinterpreting classic artworks and fusing them with emojis. Her “Garden of Emoji Delights” (originally a 1505 Bosch painting “Garden of Earthly Delights”) has gotten a lot of attention, and I can understand why. It kind of tickles:

Buzzfeed did a close up inspection of this work of art in case you are curious.

Using Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, Moby Dick was recently translated into Emoji Dick. I’m serious, you can either get a hardcover color copy for $200 or a black and white softcover copy for $40.

So, are we in the midst of a reversal into a pre-lingual stage of humanity? will the teens of the future be incapable of spelling out any word? Or are we witnessing the birth of a post-lingual revolution? a going beyond language that will improve and expand the way humans comunicate with each other?