Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'Smile

2. Could Emoji Really Still Be Around Years In The Future?

The idea of robotic interfaces that can only communicate though emoji seems quite ridiculous, isn’t it just a passing fad? And just how much can be communicated through smilies and suchlike? There are around 1851 emojis compared to 171,486 currently active words in the English language (according to the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary), surely the little symbols can’t outlive such a historic language?

Love them or loathe them, the emojis are certainly the flavour of the month, and are set to be a summer box office hit in their very own movie. They are also the language of choice for the generation that the BBC has been working hard to reach with the show. But it’s not just a shorthand tool for communicating in under 140 characters. Just last year Moby Dick was translated into emoji and no doubt the bible will be next.

Some are already claiming that emoji should be treated as an official language. It has the advantage of being a universally recognised form of communication, even if an emoji can still mean different things to different people (does a dumbbell mean buff or gym?).

So yes, it could happen, but almost certainly not quite in the way it appears on Smile. Would the future currency of a new Earth really be British pounds? And wouldn’t there be thousands of symbols we wouldn’t understand in the 21st Century? Like any language emoji is an evolving one.