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 : Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP
With three simple keystrokes, Scott Fahlman brought a smile to the internet.
In a 1982 message board post, Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University, proposed using typographical smiley faces to mark jokes and clear up confusion about writers' intentions. With his simple proposal, the  :
Emotibles'  :
An unknown visionary (or maybe a time traveler) used typographical symbols to mimic human expressions in an  :
Old-school methods for inter-vehicular communication -- flipping the bird at the tailgating bastard behind you or mumbling "sorry" to yourself after cutting somebody off -- aren't exactly effective.
Cruise into the 21st century with the  :
Feeling a little remote from your loved one? Drop a clue about your current mood with the  :
Wear your emotion on your lapel (or anywhere else) with one of these  :
Emoticons aren't just for the internet. With the  :
Screw e-mail -- use an actual mailbox to send a message with these  :
Endless mutations on the smiley face, as popularized by AOL Instant Messenger and other services that use animated emoticons, show up all over the place. Smiley World, which registered the '60s-era smiley face as a trademark in 1971, sells  :
One beautiful thing about emoticons: The keystroke expressions can be put to virtually limitless creative uses. These boobtastic potholders by CrochetandCrafts owe a clear debt of gratitude to Fahlman's very first smiley.
                
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