WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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MATT PARKER: It is with great pleasure that
I bring to the stage,

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both a friend of mine, and famously "that
guy from the internet":

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he's wearing a slightly off-red shirt,

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can you please put your hands together and
welcome to the stage, it's Tom Scott!

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TOM SCOTT: Thank you!

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Where's the clicker? Matt, where'd you put
the clicker?

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Ah! Great. Black clicker, black table. It's
wonderful.

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Hello, my name is Tom Scott. Hello!

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Wonderful, you're alive. I am an accidental
emoji expert.

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I didn't mean -- also, sorry, let's get one
thing out of the way,

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this is going to be less of a polished talk
than I normally do,

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there are two reasons for that:

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one, I didn't quite rehearse as much as I
should,

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and two, I hate shtick.

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I hate the idea that you become "that person
known for that thing"

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and yet I've plenty of shticks in my time.

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I had the pirate shtick, that was a bad year.

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And now I have the emoji shtick. And I didn't
mean to.

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I didn't mean to. But me and a friend came
up with an idea,

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we built a messenger on your phone that you
can only send emoji through.

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Even your username had to be emoji.

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And we get 70,000 people signing up to that
because they all went

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"What? I've got to get an emoji as my username?
What do I do?"

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and it turns out you can be rude in emoji,
really creatively.

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We thought we wouldn't have to put a swear
filter on that.

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We did. Lot of aubergines. A lot of aubergines.

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We killed that, after just under a year.

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But then I went and make this, which is a
full size emoji keyboard.

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I say full size, it's 14 keyboards. There
are a lot of emoji. All hooked up.

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But as a result of that, it turns out that
I now know

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most of the technical details of how emoji
works.

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Also, it turns out that I am now an expert
on emoji to the extent

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that Radio 2 called me up and said 'can you
bring your keyboard in',

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I thought: Radio. Keyboard.

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And literally, there was a moment where they
said

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"could you just... what does it sound like
to type on?"

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Well, it sounds like a keyboard.

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So I did that. So I am an accidental and grumpy
emoji expert.

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These are the first emoji.

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These are the first ones that were ever made.

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I think they've been coloured here, which
they weren't normally,

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but one engineer in Japan, decided that they
had a bit --

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because computers, which is all the detail
you're getting in a 10-minute talk,

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there was a bit of room left over.

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So there's the idea of text encoding, which
is where you take

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the letters than we write in, and you turn
them into 1s and 0s

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that computers can understand.

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America kind of did that first? Or at least,
did the big worldwide version of that.

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So that's great, you have A-Z, 0-9, doesn't
take up that much room.

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Japan: loads more characters, you needed a
bit more room.

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And because computers, they had a bit of space
left over.

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So one engineer goes, you know what? We can
put pictures in there.

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'Cos we're basically sending a load of different
pictures for each character

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let's add some more. So those are the first
emoji.

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Some transport, some star signs, some numbers.

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And they're just used on one mobile network.

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And then the next mobile network went "that
is a brilliant idea,

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"we're having that." Only they used a completely
different and incompatible system

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and then a third network did the same. And
this was fine.

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They didn't work together.

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And then, along came the Unicode Consortium!

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Which does sound like a sci-fi baddie, but
they're actually

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the linguists and computer scientists in charge
of making sure

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that everyone can talk to each other online.

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The reason that someone in Japan can send
you a text, in Japanese,

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and it will now arrive on your phone intact
is because of these guys.

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The most amazing thing in computer standardisation
that's ever been done.

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They went to France, they looked at France,

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they said "you're mostly like English, that's
fine,

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"you've got a little bit of a weird letter
here, that's fine,

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"we can take -- thanks, we're going to take
your letters,

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"and put them just there in the standard.
You OK? You're cool."

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All right. They went to Russia. Russia and
then all there. They said,

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"oh, you've got a whole different alphabet.

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"All right, that's fine. We're going to take
your alphabet.

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"Oh! Sorry, Belarus, you've got some more
letters.

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"Okay, we're going to take all those,

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"and we're going to put them just there."

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And then they got to Japan, and they went
"bloody hell...

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"right, Japan, okay, that's fine, we've got
all these,

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"and we'll put them right there... okay, right,
that's fine,

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"we're going to put them in the standard just
in...

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"Japan, what are those?"

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And Japan's like, "they're emoji. We use them
to talk."

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"Those are not letters."

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"Don't care. We use them to communicate. They're
characters.

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"You've got to include them. You know, two-way...?"

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"What do you think?"

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"Well, we let America have the smiley face,
didn't we?"

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"Right, fine, fine, Japan, we're going to
take those,

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"we're going to put them in there,

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"and no-one is going to care."

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And no-one did care, and then Apple came along.

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And Apple wanted to sell iPhones in Japan,

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so they put an emoji keyboard on there

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and no-one noticed for a little while

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and then one person in Britain -- sorry, in
America, went..

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"hurr! I can send piles of poo to my friends!"

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So they did. And their friends went "how did
you...

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"how did you do that? Show me!"

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And soon there's this ready-made viral explosion
of piles of poo.

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Which I guess is dysentry.

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And now we have emoji cushions and emoji pillows.

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That's a photo by my friend Dan, who was walking
around Dalston,

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found emoji pillows, and then found another
shop selling...

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turns out there's a lot of emoji pillows in
Dalston, if anyone wants one.

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This is the Unicode Consortium's motto.

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It is: "enabling people around the world
to use computers in any language".

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This is how the world sees the Emoji Consor--
er, the Uni--

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'Emoji Consortium'! Spot the Freudian slip.

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This is how the world sees the Unicode Consortium's
motto:

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So, Unicode 9's out soon. And this is how
I see them talking to the world,

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it's like "hey, world, Unicode 9 is out now,
and it's amazing!

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"It's got to Osage alphabet in it!" This is
an alphabet

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that was only designed a few years ago. This
is amazing.

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"It's got the Georgian Lari symbol." Brand
new currency symbol. It's in there.

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They're just sat down in committe meetings,
and had really vicious fights

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between different representatives from different
countries

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about how particular languages should go in,

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because it's actually really complicated.

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And the world went "k".

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"By the way," they say, "we've got some new
emoji too."

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And suddenly we care!

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Does anyone know what this emoji is?

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Does anyone know what this emoji is, by the
way?

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["You!"] Is that me? Yeah, it's close. Seriously,
quick shout out...

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["Triumph!"] Triumph! Yes! Who was up there
first?

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There is a measuring tape going to the lady...

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all right, so this is... this is worrying.
This might not work,

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let's see if we can get... hey-up!

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Missed by a mile! I did not do well at sports.

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Yeah, it's 'look of triumph' which no-one
actually uses it for,

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because it was designed in Japan, that's a
different cultural reference,

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which is great, so.

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The 2016 emoji are out soon.

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Here are some of them. This is from Emojipedia,
which is a thing.

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They allow re-use of this with credit.

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These are some of what we've got. This is
about the half the candidates.

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We've got 'nauseated face', let's be honest,
that's overdue.

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We've got 'duck', obviously that's vital.

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We don't have 'duckface', which feels like
it should be in there.

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We do have 'selfie'.

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So you can put that next to any emoji now,
just put that on it.

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We also have 'dancing man', and I'll get back
to him in a minute.

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They're going to get ratified probably in
a meeting in May 2016

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they'll be on your phone by the end of the
year.

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Probably.

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Maybe.

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But what's interesting, for me at least, is
the 2017 emoji.

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'Cos we've had the first few candidates for
that now,

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we might have 'chinese takeout box' and 'skeptical
face with one eyebrow raised',

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but that's not the interesting thing.

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Because recently we've had these. We've had
skin tone modifiers.

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Now these are really important, these are
fantastic,

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because it means it's not all default yellow.

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As anyone who's watched the Simpsons knows,
yellow is not default neutral.

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But: if you want to actually make one of these,

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behind the scenes you are putting the regular
emoji in,

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and then you are putting what is called a
'skin tone modifier' or a 'tag character'.

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From 1 to 5 on the Fitzpatrick scale, which
is a skin tone scale.

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So there's actually two separate characters
there

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and they get merged together.

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The 2017 emojis are going to get more tags.
If proposal--

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I said this was a lot of detail--

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if proposal TR52 gets ratified next year.

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And the tag characters that are going to get
added are for gender...

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gender, hair colour and possibly direction.

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Direction's easy, it's so that everyone agrees
which way the gun is pointing

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when you do an emoji that someone shot someone.

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It's good for, like, I don't know, if you've
shot someone.

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Hair colour. It's going to be black, brown,
red, grey, blond and...

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what have I forgotten? Who have I missed?

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["White!"] No...

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Bald! That's it! No hair at all. I know at
least three people in here

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who have different hair colours to that.

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If you have an issue with that,

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please take it up with the Unicode Consortium,
not me.

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Which is taken, I swear, from the list of
hair colours that are valid for

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US drivers' licenses and the UN Grounds Pass.

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I looked at the specification, that's where
they got the list from.

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So you'll be able to have a different skin
colour, different hair colour,

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and crucially, different gender presentation.
Because:

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on the left is how Apple says 'dancer'.

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And on the right is how Android said 'dancer'
until recently.

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So if you were a woman and you said "I'm feeling
like this today,"

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it did not go well when it came through to
an Android user.

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So there is now a separate woman dancer and
man dancer,

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but for everything else the idea is you have
a character

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and then a gender symbol, which is great,

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because currently the Unicode construction
worker is male

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and the Unicode receptionist is female

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because apparently it's the 1980s.

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And if you think this is ridiculous, this
is my final point,

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if you think this is ridiculous, this is too
much,

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this is something no-one should care about,

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this is just a lot of, of... wrangling over
a minor detail,

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yes it sort of is. And that boardroom meeting

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will have a lot of things to decide about it.

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But if you think this is not something you
care about,

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just imagine how the people in that board
meeting feel.

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Because they've got a long list --

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I've seen the agenda for the last meeting,
I read it,

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it's got all sorts of really wonderful things.

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Some of the best linguistics,

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some of the best computer scientists,

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some of the best computational linguists

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are going to be in that room deciding really
important things

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about language and how we're going to use it

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and the only thing that the press are going
to care about in 2017

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is whether there is going to be a condom emoji.

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My name's Tom Scott, enjoy the night!

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MATT PARKER: Tom Scott, ladies and gentlemen!

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If we've learned anything from Tom Scott,

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it is: shtick happens.

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And vote yes on Proposition TR52!

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So there you go. And -- Tom! True YouTube
professional.

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He was talking, someone bumped a glass over,

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he paused for an edit break...

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TOM SCOTT: I didn't even notice I'd done that!

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MATT PARKER: and then picked up from the most
recent sentence fragment,

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so if you could all just mentally edit that
bit out...!

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[Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]