What can Scott Fahlman’s remarkable invention do for you

Stories are data with a soul.
Today I’d like to share with you a short story from John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity:

“The internet tells me that the smiley may have been invented in 1982 by a Mr. Scott Fahlman, currently at Carnegie Mellon University. I find it odd that this invention had not happened sooner. The act of writing by hand doesn’t lend itself to the use of smile yes, however in the age of the typewritten letter, one would have expected to stumble upon the funny combination of characters that can make a wide variety of silly faces like :-) 8^) ;-0 =) |-D and so forth.

Why have smileys evolved? Why does the textual medium need such baroque flourishes? Because of the human need to better express emotion—to capture the nuances of communication that we take for granted in speech. Interfacing through text, speaking to other disembodied voices, it is easy to stray from normal social mores. Smiley evolved as a way to temper and soften textual conversations without the facial cues speakers use to signify when they are ‘just kidding.’ And although sending photos is now possible, text continues to dominate.”
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My 2¢: The dominant activity in today’s digitally powered world is reading. (Online, offline… what line?) Keep it simple—tell short stories focused around simple ideas, expressed with simple words. But don’t forget that:

a. Simplicity is not about less effort. Simplicity is all about the right effort.
b. Emotion is the mother of action. Human beings tend to move when their emotions are moved.
   It’s easy to forget that :-).