The Smiley Icon

Here is an email I got in 2007 asking about an email I had written in 1982. In addition to the light it may shed on the emoticon, it is a good reminder:

Never type anything into a computer unless you wouldn't mind having it in your permanent record and published in the newspaper.

Click here if you think that's an overreaction.

In 2017 I looked at this page again and found that the link to the Medill News Service article was broken, so I replaced it with a local copy of the original email from 1982.

To: kwright@tiac.net
From: redacted@northwestern.edu
Subject: story for Medill News Service-- please respond soon!

Hi there,

I'm a writer for the Medill News Service, a news wire at Northwestern University, and I'm doing a story today about that 1982 discussion thread where Scott Fahlman proposed the :-). I was really amused by your inital suggestion (and I know this was a long time ago) about using the "&" symbol, and I was wondering if you remembered anything about that posting (I'll paste it below.) Have people asked you a lot about it since it was re-discovered in 2002? Also, what was your involvement at CMU in 1982? Were you a grad student?

If you're able to respond before 3pm I'd be very grateful.

 thanks!
  Laura Kwerel

> "No, no, no! Surely everyone will agree that the "&" symbol is the funniest character on the keyboard. It looks funny (like a jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter.) It sounds funny (say it three times quickly) and I just know if I could get my nose into the vacuum of the CRT it would even smell funny!"

Arts Reporter 
Medill News Service

And my response...

From: Keith Wright 
To: redacted@northwestern.edu
Subject: Re: story for Medill News Service-- please respond soon!

From: l-kwerel@northwestern.edu
> I'm a writer for the Medill News Service,

Never heard of it.

> a news wire at Northwestern University,

(-: In Boston we call it Northeastern :-)

> and I'm doing a story today about that 1982 discussion thread where Scott Fahlman proposed the :-). I was really amused by your inital suggestion (and I know this was a long time ago) about using the "&" symbol, and I was wondering if you remembered anything about that posting (I'll paste it below.)

I remember it.

> Have people asked you a lot about it since it was re-discovered in 2002?

No. Never. When it showed up on Slashdot, a guy here in Worcester asked if I was the same Keith Wright. (I was and I think I still am.)

> Also, what was your involvement at CMU in 1982?

Research programmer.

> Were you a grad student?

No, though I applied twice (in two consecutive years) I was not accepted and got a PhD from University of Pittsburgh instead.

> If you're able to respond before 3pm I'd be very grateful.

You are in a big hurry to get twenty-five year old news.

I remember that later in that thread (In a part that may not have been copied off the back-up tapes) I advocated "joke brackets" like above, that mark both the beginning and end of the non-serious part. That never went anywhere, which sort of surprised me since Fahlman and several other people involved in that conversation were Lispers. Lisp, of course, is a programming language that uses Lots of Irritating Stupid Parentheses, in its syntax.

I have since decided that "Emoticons" are an eye-sore and I never use them (the joke brackets above are one of the few exceptions in a quarter of a century (since I left CMU)). If Shakespeare could write without emoticons, I guess twenty-six letters are good enough for me.

— Keith

PS: The tiac.net address was obsolete a decade ago.

The reporter and I are discussing an email that I wrote in 1982, and which wound up on this permanent public archive at Microsoft research labs. (It's in the context of the "joke" thread.)
[2017-09-19]: Actually, that link is not "dead" but it just goes to the personal page of some guy at Microsoft. So much for permanent.

I think this is the best research ever done at MS.

I did not even know it was there until I came across a reference to it on Slashdot, which was, at the time, one of the most popular web sites in the world.

[Added 2017-09-19 (35 years)]: There was a link here to the article at Medill News Service, but some time in the last ten years that link has gone bad. Instead here is a link to a copy of the original thread in which :-) was proposed. . Just to prove not all links are dead, here's a link to an NPR story by Scott Simon that mentions Professor[sic] Keith Wright: emoticon-turns-30. Oh well, if that were the worst mistake to get broadcast then it would be better world.

So you think it's OK to type private messages into a computer? What are you thinking?

God sees everything. I don't care what the computer sees. If you don't need privacy, then the warning is not addressed to you. Type away; I hope you still think it's funny when you read it on the web in twenty-five years.
I send it by private email. That is often sufficient to keep it out of the newspapers, but not always. Sara Palin's email is on the Web. Are you sure you know more about security than the second to next president of the United States of America does? OK, maybe that bar is too low.
I don't use Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail. I use my own SMTP server. That strategy seems to have worked to keep Cheney/Bush administration emails secret, but it is not foolproof. Watch out for your ISP, the ISP's of everyone you send mail to, and of course the recipients themselves.
It's not sent by email at all. It's just my local file. If you (not your employer) owns the computer and physically controls it, then you are ready to worry about whether it can be stolen, seized by the police, or broken into over the internet. Also watch anyone who provides you with software, or can access your backup files. What about the Total Information Awareness Program?
It's encrypted. Why do you trust the source of your encryption software? What if Ron Rivest and Phil Zimmermann were spies?
I have compiled all the software from source. If you have not already done so, read Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture Reflections on Trusting Trust (PDF) (Copyright permission at end of document.--thanks ACM)
I work for the NSA and I think you're wrong. OK, maybe you can keep computer files secret from the rest of us. It's spooks like you that make me determined to assume that my files can be read, and advise my friends to make the same assumption.

This page is standard validated HTML 4.0.
(checked 2017-09-18)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

This page best when viewed through the bottom of a beer mug...
but any browser should work, so if it looks wrong to you, let me know. I'll try to fix it, not blame it on your software.