Are we climbing back up the tree?

So many people use emoticons these days that they have become part of daily life both in the personal, and even the business, environments.

My beef with this is that we seem to be resorting to the cave paintings of our distant forebears as a means of talking to one another.

Sure, emoticons are sometimes fun but should they completely replace the written word?

I, for one, don’t think so.  I think emoticons are just fine when used to amplify the written word but I find it sad to see that some conversations take place entirely in this completely graphical way.

In my mind, communication solely by emoticon is a step backwards.  Is the next step to talk to each other via grunts?  Some people may already be half way there!