[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #411: Better emoji

Wed Nov 12 10:30:11 EST 2014

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OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4cast #411: Better emoji
November 12th, 2014

emojiA few weeks ago, we considered doing a /4cast/ about emoji. Emoji 
are not really new 
<http://readwrite.com/2012/06/07/emoji-and-the-iphone-fueled-rise-of-talking-in-tiny-pictures>, 
however - we're just hearing more about them lately - and frankly, some 
of you guys out there probably know more about them than we do. But last 
week, the Unicode Consortium, which is working on guidelines 
<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/> for making emoji characters that 
can be used across a wide variety of platforms, released a new draft of 
those guidelines that included a section on diversity. Now emoji are 
becoming a richer "language" that might be used for some serious 
communication.

  * Unicode wants to fix emoji's ethnicity problem
    <http://readwrite.com/2014/11/05/unicode-emoji-ethnicity-problem>
    (ReadWrite | Lauren Orsini) "The Unicode Consortium notes that emoji
    were originally intended to have a 'a more generic (inhuman)
    appearance, such as a yellow/orange color or a silhouette,' but
    Japanese carriers soon set a light skinned precedent, intending the
    emoji to look like the Japanese people who first used them. Since
    emoji use has long since spread from Japan to the rest of the world,
    emoji diversity is overdue."
  * Proposed changes to emoji standard would allow for more diversity,
    increased selection of skin tones
    <http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/proposed-changes-to-emoji-standard-would-allow-for-more-diversity-increased-selection-of-skin-tones/>
    (TechCrunch | Sarah Perez) "They weren't encoded into the Unicode
    Standard until 2010, but having originally grown out of a smaller
    geographic region, the 'generic' images being used didn't accurately
    reflect the diversity found elsewhere in the world. Over time,
    things have progressed ... slowly. Apple updated its emoji
    collection in 2012 <http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/emoji-ios-6/>
    to include a lesbian and homosexual couple, for example. But even
    then, people wanted to know, where were the black emoji?"
  * Unicode proposes a way to let an emoji black man and white woman
    hold hands
    <http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/11/unicode-finally-discovers-how-to-let-emoji-black-man-and-white-woman-hold-hands/>
    (Ars Technica | Casey Johnston) "To introduce diversity, the
    developers propose introducing five color swatch emojis of skin
    tones that, when combined with an existing person emoji, would
    render as a single 'emoji presentation' with the skin color in
    question. So for instance, a font could take a boy face plus brown
    swatch and render a boy with a brown skin tone and darker hair."
  * Proposed draft Unicode technical report #51: Diversity
    <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Diversity> (Unicode Consortium
    | Mark Davis and Peter Edberg, eds.) "There are several emoji for
    multi-person groups, such as COUPLE WITH HEART. The emoji modifiers
    affect all the people in such characters. However, real multi-person
    groupings include many in which various members have different skin
    tones. For representing such groupings, users can employ techniques
    already found in current emoji practice, in which a sequence of
    emoji is intended to be read together as a unit, with each emoji in
    the sequence contributing some piece of information about the unit
    as a whole."

*/Articles from Ohio Web Library <http://ohioweblibrary.org>:/*

  * A return to hieroglyphics.
    <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/ehost/detail/detail?sid=7dc66c07-6424-4d48-8f9b-2e7a8a3ac026%40sessionmgr115&vid=0&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=96966521>
    (/Fortune/, 7/21/2014, p148 | Erin Griffith)
  * Why 140 characters, when one will do? Tracing the emoji evolution.
    <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/pov/detail/detail?sid=8bbaf050-85f1-44f5-aa21-67a2dc2cb042%40sessionmgr112&vid=0&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9cG92LWxpdmU%3d#db=pwh&AN=6XN2014063015>
    (NPR's /All Things Considered/, 6/30/2014 | transcript)
  * Poker face.
    <http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.oplin.org/lrc/detail/detail?sid=4cd1aa9b-b61b-4e6a-ba5b-e4706358d09c%40sessionmgr115&vid=0&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9bHJjLWxpdmU%3d#db=lfh&AN=88018394>
    (/New Yorker/, 5/20/2013, p92-99 | Jonathan Nolan)

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