I learned a new word today: emoji. I am emoji illiterate. Chances are I’ll remain mostly emoji illiterate, only learning a bit here and there when I have to. This depends on whether or not emoji will help me understand words better and communicate better. I can’t predict that.

Will schools teach emoji? Will emoji become an essential part of communicating? Will “Thou shalt not kill” be injected with a graphic emoji or two in order to make the point emphatically?

This blog editor has no easy access to emoji that I can see. It tells me that the readability of this blog needs improvement, which means I’m supposed to reduce it to a fourth grade level or lower. I am being told that I’ve made it too difficult for readers in the preceding paragraph by starting three sentences in a row with the same word. Maybe emoji will help. They’re on mobile devices, but I have none.

Ten-year olds will be emoji literate. Near-eighty year olds will be wondering whether that road sign means stop, one-way street, or under construction. Not to worry. Individual driving will become a thing of the past anyway. Learning and memory will be achieved by brain implants as in the movie “Total Recall”. Will parents shape the purposes, talents and choices of their children by the implants they buy for them? Today these are shaped by more haphazard processes.

The nature of human nature and free will are unanswered questions. Human nature is going to be called into greater and greater question as technology changes. The question of what defines us critically as human beings forces itself on us. Answers to this question shape political philosophies.

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