This free course, A brief
history of communication: hieroglyphics to emojis, is an introduction to the history of writing, and the key role it plays in human communication. It tracks this history from the invention of writing around 5500 years ago to the mass popularity of
emojis today.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
understand how different writing systems have developed over time
understand how technology influences what we can do with language, and the form that language takes.
I really enjoyed this! The content was really engaging, well-paced, and made a great use of mixed media. I particularly liked the interview the Gedeon and his reflections on working with the Unicode Consortium!
I would have liked to see more arguments *against* this 'emojis and text-speak are dumbing humanity down' rhetoric. It felt really unbalanced in favour of that traditional thinking. Gretchen McCulloch's wonderful book 'Because Internet' sheds some light on this and makes the argument that Internet lingo (including emoji) are just the next evolution of language rather than something to be getting all bent out of shape about. Language will continue to grow and evolve as humans do - it's never a fully 'finished' product.