Episode Transcript
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Jane (00:21):
This is But Why
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. Onthis show, we take questions
from curious kids just like youand we find answers. We love
your questions because often onesimple question can inspire us
to explore so many differenttopics: science, history, art
(00:43):
and culture...all wrapped intoone question. Today's is kind of
like that.
Leila (00:48):
My name is Leila. I'm
from Melbourne, New Jersey. I'm
nine years old. And my questionis: how were emojis invented?
Jane (00:59):
Before we can answer how
emoji were invented, we need to
make sure we all know what theyare. If you've ever watched a
parent or an older sibling or acaregiver sending a message to
someone else on their phone--ormaybe you've even grab their
phone yourself--you might havenoticed that, in addition to
typing words, you can type inpictures to get your message
(01:19):
across. You might add a heartsymbol or a smiley face to end a
message with a kind of note ofaffection, kind of like, "I love
you" or "I like you." Or youcould use the face of someone
laughing instead of typing out,"That's so funny," when somebody
sends you a joke. Maybe you wantto know what's for dinner. Well,
instead of writing, "What's fordinner tonight?" you could punch
(01:41):
in a picture of sushi, achicken, drumstick and a bowl of
salad, followed by a questionmark. There are lots of pictures
to choose from. And all of thosesymbols are called emoji, small
images, symbols or icons used inelectronic communication.
Paul Galloway (01:58):
The emoji
developed over a long period.
But in particular, in Japan andthe 1990s the word is actually a
Japanese word. It's a two-partword. So "eh" means picture, and
"moji" means character. So emojimeans "picture character." My
name is Paul Galloway. I'm acollection specialist at the
(02:19):
architecture and designdepartment in the Museum of
Modern Art. And that's a verylong way of saying I take care
of art and design at the museum.
Jane (02:27):
The museum Paul works for
is sometimes called MoMA,
because that's what the initialspell: Museum of Modern Art.
It's in New York City. As partof his job, Paul is actually
working on a book about emoji.And by the way, you say emoji,
whether you're talking about asingle picture, or lots of them.
(02:47):
Kind of like how one moose iscalled a moose and many of those
animals altogether are stillcalled...moose. Let's get to
Lelia's question about how emojiwere invented back in the 1990s.
Paul Galloway (03:00):
They were
developed in people trying to
make cell phones and pagers.Before there were cell phones,
if you wanted to catch yourfriend or your parents, and they
were away from a home phone thathad a cord connecting it to the
line, you would call a pager andleave a little callback number.
And then that person would thengo find a public payphone and
call back at that number. Andthe youth in Japan, the young
(03:23):
people, didn't like doing itthis way. So they immediately
started using pagers in a waythat nobody anticipated. They
would use little number codes tomean things to each other like
01069 meant "I love you." Or 049meant "Thank you." And they use
these kinds of codes. And thenalong came one of the Japanese
(03:43):
companies that was selling thesepagers and said, "You know what
people might really like is aheart. And then they can send a
symbol instead of just numbersand letters." So this company
was called NTT DOCOMO, which isvery much like a big Verizon
Wireless or AT&T, it's a hugecompany. And their pager with a
heart on it was extremelypopular. And a few years later,
(04:04):
they released a cell phone thatalso had the emoji capability,
but this time with 176. So youcould say that emoji were made
in Japan and made for Japanesepagers and cell phones. But they
even go a little further backfrom that. Some of you, some of
your listeners might know thatkind of emoticons, the smiley
(04:26):
faces you can make with a colonand a parenthesis. In Japan they
have more keys and characters ontheir keyboard. So there's even
more complicated faces that theycan make including the shrugee.
We've all seen the kind of funnyshrugee face.
Jane (04:39):
Right. You make it out of
lines and it looks like somebody
with their hands raised likethey're going "I don't know."
Paul Galloway (04:43):
Yeah. it's it's
it's a wonderful kind of...I use
it all the time. People ask mewhere do emoji come from and I
respond with a shrug.
Jane (04:51):
Which technically is not
an emoji, right? Emoji are
actual pictures, and emoticonsare the ones that are made with
the letters and numbers and thatare more sort of symbols that
represent a picture.
Paul Galloway (05:03):
Right, and
they're sideways. That's another
key thing. Emoticons, in theWest, you have sideways faces,
happy faces, angry faces, andkaomoji, which is the Japanese
equivalent. They're horizontal,but they're not characters we
have on our keyboard, you can'ttype out the shrug emoji. We
don't have the right characterson your keyboard here in the
west. So that's only somethingthat can be done in Japan. So
(05:25):
there's emoticons, there'skaomoji, and then emoji become
the kind of actual faces thatyou see on cell phones. And they
were used on cell phones inJapan for quite a long time. But
they were really stuck in Japanfor a while because if you were
on a DOCOMO phone, you couldn'tsend an emoji to somebody on a
different company's phone. Soeach company had their own kind
(05:47):
of locked thing. So it didn'twork all that well. And it
wasn't until 2006, when Googleadded emoji to Gmail, and then
in 2010, when Apple added emojito the iPhone that suddenly the
world took notice and startedusing them. And now emoji are
used in crazy numbers. I think,on Facebook messenger apps
alone, there's 5 billion emojisent every day, every single
(06:10):
day.
Jane (06:10):
The emoji that you are
talking about that were built in
the 90s, they looked prettydifferent than what we see on
cell phones today. What did theylook like?
Paul Galloway (06:19):
Well they look,
for kids today, they might be
like something they would see inMinecraft, everything's very
blocky and pixelated. And that'sbecause computers back then were
very, very weak. They were notvery good computers. And in
particular, cell phones werevery, very primitive. They did
not have very strong computers.Their screens were tiny, and
(06:42):
only had one color and it wasvery, very simple graphics. So
the emoji from the 90s in Japanare extremely simple and blocky.
Jane (06:51):
Emoji today are much more
detailed. They look like full
little pictures. But how do theyget on people's phones? Who
chooses which pictures getincluded and how?
Jane Solomon (07:01):
My name is Jane
Solomon. I am a emoji expert.
And I'm also a dictionaryeditor.
Jane (07:11):
Jane is an editor for
emojipedia, an online
encyclopedia for all thingsemoji.
Jane Solomon (07:18):
If you go to
emojipedia and you want to look
up, okay, what are differentmeanings for this kind of hand
gesture or this flower,whatever, you might be able to
find some information there. Youmight be able to find what
flower specifically it is. Andyou'd also be able to find how
it looks across differentplatforms.
Jane (07:37):
By different platforms,
she means things like different
phones made by differentcompanies. So a picture of a
cactus might look different on aphone made by Apple than on an
Android phone. Here's somethingthat might be tough to wrap your
head around. When you send anemoji, what is actually being
sent from one phone to anotherisn't the picture itself. It's a
(07:58):
code. The code gets sent fromyour phone to your friend's
phone. So okay, I'm going tosend Melody a picture of a
cactus. First I find the pictureI want. And then I hit send. And
now Melody's phone is going toread, or interpret, the code
from my phone. And what she'llsee on her screen is a picture
(08:22):
of a cactus. She sent me back abison and a sloth, so I'm going
to send her a heart. Now,something simple, like a heart,
is pretty easy to make from onephone to the next. But as the
emoji pictures got morecomplicated, as more and more of
(08:42):
them have been created, and theylooked different, like I mean,
you can get a bowl of spaghettiwith sauce, or you could send a
picture of a person getting ahaircut. Well, not all the
phones and devices were makingthe pictures from those codes in
exactly the same way on everykind of phone.
Jane Solomon (08:59):
Well, for example,
there were emoji that were of
different facial expressions.And they could have completely
different meanings or--based onwho was sending it and what
device they had, and who wasreceiving it and what device
they had. For example, one ofthem is the grimacing face,
(09:21):
which is basically a yellow faceemoji with two eyes, and then a
mouth that's kind of in an ovalshape, with teeth showing. And
in the past, it appeareddifferently on different phones,
it was a completely differentexpression.
Jane (09:38):
If you think you're
sending your friend one kind of
face, but your friend isactually seeing something
totally different, that doesn'tmake communication go very
smoothly. So a group that dealswith computer language got
involved to create some emojirules.
Jane Solomon (09:54):
Unicode is this
organization and their goal is
not related to emoji,specifically. It's related to
communication and getting allthe languages that people use,
all the written languages, ableto be sent from one device to
(10:17):
another across platforms, anylanguage you want to do. And
these big tech companies don'tnecessarily prioritize making
communication accessible inthose languages. So Unicode
makes these code points forthese different characters that
might not have existed if thereweren't an organization looking
(10:39):
out for that. Now, emoji gotadded on to this mission, around
2008, 2009, 2010. They startedworking on making emoji
accessible in this way. Becausebefore you could only really use
them if you had specific phonesand were in Japan, basically. So
(11:02):
emoji got pulled into thatbecause they were viewed as this
important mode of communication.
Jane (11:09):
And so now when you send
an emoji to a friend, you can be
pretty sure your friend is goingto see the same picture on their
phone that you have on yours.But Unicode, the organization in
charge of this, also has a lotof control over which new emoji
get added. And Jane is part ofthe group that makes those
decisions. Coming up are emojiart? And how can you get a new
(11:33):
emoji added?
This is But Why a podcast
for curious kids. I'm Jane
Lindholm. Today we're learningabout emoji, those little
pictures you can send in textmessages and emails. at MoMA,
the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork City, you can see the
original emoji created in Japanin the 1990s. They're projected
(11:57):
up on a huge white wall sothey're bigger than your head.
There's like a weird littleumbrella, a boxy little car.
There's a sun, which looks likea circle with little lines
around it. I mean, remember,these were the olden days of
emojis, so they look blocky andpixelated, not like the pictures
of today. But still you can tellwhat they are. They're
(12:18):
definitely real pictures ofthings. So if you send that boxy
umbrella, the other person isprobably going to know it's an
umbrella. But what are theseboxy images doing in one of the
most impressive art museums inthe whole world? Are emoji art.
We asked Paul Galloway. He's theguy who says he takes care of
(12:39):
art and design at MoMA,
Paul Galloway (12:41):
Emoji, we felt,
were a really important moment
in communication design, and howwe could tell the story of where
we are right now. We love takingdesign objects that everybody
uses everyday (12:51):
chairs, cars,
trains that you're on and
environments that you're in, andhelping people see them in a new
way. And most people arecompletely unfamiliar with where
emoji come from, how theystarted, the fact that emoji is
a Japanese word. I can't tellyou how many people think it has
emotion as part of the word. Andit's like, no, no, no, it's
(13:13):
completely got nothing aboutemotion in the word, it's a
Japanese word. So we love thatidea of sharing with people the
genesis of the story, and thenhelping them to kind of think
about why we use emoji and whythat becomes so important to us.
An important thing to rememberis that art is a form of
communication. It's a way oftaking an idea from me, the
(13:34):
artist, and giving it to you,the viewer. And that's done
visually. And we can communicateideas visually, we can
communicate ideas verbally, byspeaking them out loud. We can
communicate ideas by sendingmessages to each other. And so
art and language are, have beenlinked forever. In fact, art is
much older than the writtenword. And an art museum, as our
(13:56):
job, is to tell the world aboutvisual culture. So we feel it
very important to help educateour public of the importance of
the art that is in their livesevery day. We like to think of
architecture and design as theart that goes home with you,
right? You go to MoMA and yousee Van Gogh, and you see
Picasso, and you go home and youdo live with the art that's on
(14:18):
your iPhone, or on the videogame that you're playing. And
you are part of that artisticstory.
Jane (14:24):
One of the things I've
been thinking about is how
people use emoji today, often,instead of using words. But what
if your idea of what a face withstar eyes means is different
from what I think it means? If Isend that picture to you, and I
mean one thing and you think Imean something else, how are we
(14:45):
really effectivelycommunicating? Are pictures
going to give enough informationfor someone to know what you're
trying to tell them? Paul saysthere are lots of ways we get
our meaning across that don'tjust involve words, and there's
lots of ways to be confused bythings, even when we use the
same words.
Paul Galloway (15:04):
We talk about
tone and intention, and written
speech, but it's very much apart of spoken speech as well.
If I'm talking to you, and I amyour boss, and I say, good job,
there's a million ways that canbe heard, I can say, "good job,"
or "good job" or "good job,"right? All of them are the exact
(15:24):
same words, but they'redelivered with completely
different meanings. And we callit we can call that gesture, we
can call that intonation. Butthere's also my face, what kind
of expression was on my facewhen I was saying "good job"?
All of those are the kind ofimportant context and further
clarification of the word "goodjob." And emoji can do that as
(15:45):
well, right? You can say "goodjob" and a thumbs up emoji. That
can be read as actuallyaffirming you did a good job, or
it can be read as sarcastic. Butthat same danger can be had in
person, right? We are always atrisk of miscommunicating. And in
a way, I think emoji, byallowing more interpretation on
the message, actually makes thespeech much more human. Because
(16:08):
if we're just typing "good job,"like a robot, we're just left
wondering like, what could theymean? I have no idea, am I
actually talking to a person oris this a an artificial
intelligence chatbot on theother end? Whereas when you
start using emoji, you'rebringing the human into the
conversation, you're bringingthe chance of misinterpretation,
(16:29):
or a richer understanding ofwhat somebody is intending. It
allows for a little bit morechaos, which conversation is
chaotic.
Jane (16:36):
Jane Solomon agrees.
Jane Solomon (16:38):
There's no right
or wrong way to use an emoji.
You want to make sure that theperson that you're sending emoji
to understands what you'resaying. And it's very hard to
express that sometimes with justemoji. But if we use words
alongside emoji, our points canget across. Or if we have an
(16:58):
established connection withsomeone and they have the same
understanding of an emoji as wedo, we can send them back and
forth. And it can be verymeaningful. But you know, use
them however you want. They'rereally just this form of
expression that's out there andavailable to play with.
Jane (17:17):
While emoji have come a
long way from those pixelated
images of 30 years ago, Janesays she actually kind of like
those better.
Unknown (17:25):
At this point, like in
modern times, emoji have a lot
more detail. They have shadows,they have really subtle
expressions and differences inthe line quality. So yeah, they
look a lot different now. Iactually prefer the less
(17:47):
detailed emoji designs becausewhen something is less detailed
it could represent more things.When something is more detailed,
it shuts off some of theseinterpretations or it makes it a
little bit more of a stretch toto think about it in a different
(18:08):
way.
Jane (18:08):
Okay, so what if you want
to create a new emoji and get it
in everybody's phone, or atleast want to suggest one that
you think should be there?
Unknown (18:18):
Anyone from the public
can submit an emoji proposal at
this point. And then a group ofpeople called the Unicode emoji
subcommittee (and I'm actuallypart of that group) reads the
proposal, and discusses themerits of the proposal and then
recommends or doesn't recommendit to become encoded into the
(18:42):
emoji set so it can be used bypeople all over the world,
across devices.
Jane (18:48):
As we are making this
episode, there are 3664 emoji.
That sounds like a lot to choosefrom. But Jane says the
committee has approved a lotfewer emoji in recent years than
they did in the past. Eitherway, it's definitely grown
beyond the handful of originalemoji created for pagers in
(19:08):
Japan back in the 1990s. Now, interms of favorite emojis, what's
your favorite? Jane says one ofhers is actually a relatively
new one.
Unknown (19:20):
The melting face emoji,
so it's a smiley face, and it's
and the bottom of the smileyface looks as if it's melting.
And I think that's a really goodand fun emoji because it it can
express a lot of feelings atonce. It can express that maybe
(19:42):
you're trying to look happy, butthings are kind of falling
apart, which I'm sure everyonecan relate to. And it can also
express sarcasm. So it's it'sjust a really funny emoji to
send to people. I like that one.
Jane (20:00):
Thanks so much to Jane
Solomon with emojipedia and to
Paul Galloway at the Museum ofModern Art for teaching us all
about emoji. What kind of emojiwould you propose if you were
going to create a new one? Drawa picture of the emoji you think
should be there and have youradult send us a photo of it. We
want to see what you wouldcreate. That's it for this
(20:22):
episode. If you have a questionabout anything, have an adult
record you asking it. It's easyto do on a smartphone using a
voice recording app. Don'tforget to include your first
name, where you live and how oldyou are. Then your adult can
email the file toquestions@ButWhykids.org. We
can't answer every question butwe listen to them all and we
(20:43):
love hearing what's on yourmind. But Why is produced by
Melody Bodette and me, JaneLindholm, at Vermont Public and
we're distributed by PRX. Ourtheme music is by Luke Reynolds.
We'll be back in two weeks withan all new episode. Until then,
stay curious!