I have some news for the fluff writers of the Associated Press, Computers have been around for a few years now. =P

I couldn't help but chuckle at the article BTW, teen writing may cause teachers to :(. Here's the quote that got me:

The rest of us? How old do you have to be not to understand the world's most basic emoticon, it's more universal than a McDonald's sign at this point. Maybe not quite as much as the Coca-Cola trademark, but c'mon, you have to explain it? The entire premise of the article is that us adults don't understand teens with their funky way of writing and we're all worried it will enter their formal schoolwork.

I'd guess that most people met their first smiley about the same time the Internet was referred to as the information highway. My grandmother would recognize it and she's been dead and laughing in her grave about this kind of stuff for over a decade.

It's not even remotely scientific, what kind of sampling is 700 phone calls, did the reporter themselves cook up this "research" in an afternoon to sell the story? I'm almost embarrassed to push it along, except I feel comfortable ridiculing it.

Maybe the article was written in 1993. =P