Thoughts on the evolution of communication and emojis

I don't care for emojis. In fact, I have only sent one emoji and it was by accident, fumbling around with my iPhone. If someone sends me an emoji, I immediately tell them tell them not to do it again. And, I won't respond when someone sends an emoji thinking they are being funny. I am not sure why but really want nothing to do with them.

Over the 44 years I have lived, I have seen communication change and always wondered what a caveman (or, cavewoman) would think in today's world about how people communicate. I am sure most people guess they would struggle having to learn the alphabet, read a book, write an email, send a text, etc. But, as communication has evolved, specifically over the last decade, I am confident our ancient ancestors would feel quite at home.

Originally, stories were told with pictures and you can them in caves across the world. People used images to tell their stories, their history and things that were important to them in their lives. Then, as civilization evolved, we developed letters, symbols and numbers to do the very same thing and picture became a compliment to the words. From a cave drawing to Shakespeare; think about it. From carving messages on a stone tablet to typing on an iPad (tablet!), the changes have left everyone wondering are we better off or are we worse off than we used to be.

My mother talks about texting, social media, and how people used to write (with a piece of paper and a pen) things like thank you notes (vs. thank you emails) or write in journals (now, blogs). Her belief is that communication today is far worse than 40-50 years ago and that because people do not write or because of technology, we have lost something. My response, in the form of a question, was, "What do you think a caveman would say if they picked up a book?"

To clarifying what I meant, I said, "You realize how they wrote on walls and drew pictures, not having (that we know of) a standard alphabet and language so what would they think if they opened a book and saw nothing but words?" I explained to her they would probably say (If we could understand them), "What in the hell is this? No pictures? Back in my day, 100,000 years ago, we used pictures and what is this word stuff? How do you tell stories without pictures? Looks like society has gone to hell in a hand basket and then they would use the book to start a fire."

For me? My first communication pet peeve, during my adult life, was how people started abbreviating everything when email, chat and text became the primary form of communication. It drives me crazy when people would write things like "TTYL" or "BRB." I would much prefer someone to take the time and write, "Talk to you later." It made me think people were just getting lazy and it still bothers me to this day. Outside of an occasional "LMFAO" on Facebook, I am particular in a message, on any device, and do not abbreviate. I really am immune to it at this point but my thought was, "The concept of grammar is pretty much on its way out with the way people communicate now. Back when I was younger (I sound 80 but am only 44), we wrote the WHOLE WORD and were not so lazy!"

As I pondered the way communication has evolved over the centuries and how we were moving forward at the speed of light, it dawned on me that we were not going forward at all. We were going backwards. Not back to the days of pen and paper. Not back to stone tablets or the invention of the alphabet. We were going all the way back to the stone age. Why? The emoji. After all of our great advances as a civilization, we have now gone back to little pictures!

One picture can mean you are "happy." Another can show you are "angry." If I so chose, I could call someone a "shit-head." This doesn't account for the fact that there are thousands of images for everything and if you string enough together, you can tell a complete story. Sound familiar?

So, the statement I made to my mother regarding our prehistoric brothers and sisters not liking what the way we communicate today, because there are no pictures, and not knowing what to think is 100% wrong. They would fit right in.