Happy birthday, Smiley Face! :-)

CNET News.com has an irresistible story on the origins of emoticons, and how avatars might obviate the need for them.

"...the phenomenon is about to turn 25--a dinosaur in Web years. The origin of the ASCII smiley face is typically traced to September 1982, when Scott Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science, suggested that the :-) symbol be used in the subject line of an online bulletin board post to denote a humorous or non-serious topic.

"Nobody ever guessed that this would catch on. I certainly didn't," said Fahlman, who is still on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon. But as he recounted, the trend spread, initially to other Internet-pioneering universities like Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then beyond.

I'm trying to arrange an interview with Fahlman for Future Tense. Stay tuned...