How humans invented telecommunication messaging

6 billion emojis are sent on a daily basis.

That’s a lot of non written communication.

Through whatever means we use to communicate, drawing, speech, hand signals or specialist technology, being able to communicate is central to all of us, a sense of worth.

When not able to do so, through having lost your ability speak, to not being able to write or draw or see it can take away a part of us that wants to belong.

Emojis gives us a richer depth to our messages, possibly a universal meaning. Their use alone can convey meaning and feelings without the use of words.

But how did we get to the smiling or winking emoji?

Below is a timeline of how different forms of communication evolved, to what we have today.

Let us begin……

1843 – The fax machine is invented, otherwise known as ‘telecopying’

1921 – The pager is invented

1956 – Guy and St Thomas’ Hospital starts using the pager

1992 – Christmas time, a Vodafone engineer sends the very first text message in the UK saying ‘Merry Christmas’

1996 – ICQ (a stand alone Messaging App). AOL buys it in 1998

1999 – 2009 – Text messaging goes mainstream

1999 – First emojis invented by Shigetaka Kurita but largely confined to Japan

1999 – AOL and MSN do battle on computer desktop instant messaging

2000 – Touch screens start to flourish

2005 – Google Talk (chat) emerges

2006 – Google Talk moves to Hangouts (does anyone use this?!)

2008 – Slack emerges

2009 – WhatsApp emerges

2010 – Viber emerges

2010 – Emojis are incorporated into Unicode (the standard that governs text coding)

2011 – Apple iMessage emerges and gives use the three moving dots indicator when you’re writing to let the recipient(s) know

2012 – Emojis hit the big time in messaging

Check out emojitracker to see the most used emoji on Twitter (😂)

2014 — Amazon’s Alexa is released

2015 – Project Soli by Google is born, using miniature radar for touchless gesture interactions

2016 – Forward Health is founded, a dedicated secure messaging App service for healthcare in the UK

2019 — New emojis showing disabilities enter the emoji world

2020 – The fax machine is obsolete in the NHS along with paper…….??

We just love communicating!

What next?

With the speed of desktop instant messaging then moving into text messaging on mobile phones to messaging apps on smartphones, to voice activation from Siri to Alexa, where does the future lie and where is it heading for us all to communicate?

What do you see being the next big communication thing?

Or how the evolution of future communicating growing?