Shigetaka Kurita

Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J. (Spanish: [baltaˈsaɾ ɣɾaˈθjan]; 8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Wikipedia

In the mid-60s while in Buenos Aires I enjoyed a magazine that came with the daily El Clarín newspaper. It was called Tía Vincenta. On the top right of the cover was the statement “Lo bueno y breve, dos veces bueno.” Gracian. This translates to good an brief, twice as good.

It seems that Balthasar Gracian (his pseudo name was Lorenzo) was a pessimist. I wonder what he would have opined of what follows.

If Dante were alive today there are two people he would place on the lowest circle of hell.

One would be definitely be Steve Jobs. Thanks to him, the proliferation of his “smart” phone has created an increase in pedestrian deaths crossing crosswalks.

The other would be this chap:

Shigetaka Kurita

In the late 1990s, a Japanese artist named Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji. He was working for a mobile communications company called NTT Docomo. They were developing a new internet platform. Since it allowed for a limited number of characters, Kurita came up with the idea to replace words with pictures.

My excellent Real Academia Española (very up-to-date it is) defines an emoji thusly:

emoji

Del jap. emoji, y este de e 'dibujo' y moji 'carácter, signo de escritura'.

1. m. Pequeña imagen o icono digital que se usa en las comunicaciones electrónicas para representar una emoción, un objeto, una idea, etc.

Now on this Sunday, March 20, the first day of spring, I am trying to figure out why in the middle of the night, last night, I had a nightmare that included emojis.

I refuse to rant. And I will not except ever so briefly to state that I have written (some are not bad) 5513 blogs to date (not including this one). Except for John Lekich and a few others, when I post these blogs to Facebook they react with emojis.

I believe that Gracian would not consider these emoticons as following his dictum for good and brief.

We need to design an emoji that St. Peter would use on Shigetaka Kurita at heaven’s gate. What would it be?