[30] Anniversary

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    From: jor...@mcs.com (Jorn Barger)
    Newsgroups: rec.arts.ascii
    Subject: Talk: Why I like ascii art
    Date: 11 Sep 1995 17:26:51 -0500


    [Here's a little essay someone requested, by email]

    Wherever you look in computer journalism, the emphasis is always 
    on faster computers and more memory and more colors... and more 
    money!  

    So, when people write about the future of the Internet, they're 
    always dreaming of real-time video links, multimedia, virtual 
    reality, etc etc etc.  

    But for me, what's greatest about the Internet is how efficient 
    it is at transmitting *text*.  For the same 30 kilobytes you 
    could use for a small GIF on the WWWeb, you can just as well 
    transmit *fifteen typewritten pages* of text. (It's not even 'a 
    picture is worth 1000 words'-- it's more like 5000, or better!)  
    And a videolink uses millions of times as much bandwidth as 
    would an email conversation...  

    And ascii text is also the lowest common denominator that allows 
    *everyone* on the net to share data-- people are starting to 
    extend email to include graphics and fonts, but these attempts 
    exclude the majority of users, and we haven't begun to see these 
    formats (like MIME) posted to netnews...  

    So the ability of ascii-art to include images in email and 
    netnews postings could be a very useful technology... if only 
    word-processors included a simple set of commands for drawing 
    ascii shapes, or pasting together layers of ascii 'clip art'!  

    My efforts in exploring ascii-art have been an attempt to see 
    how much is possible, in representing, eg, maps, or human faces.  
    I find that if you devote a great deal of time to it, you can 
    create some very rich images... so it ought to be possible 
    someday to have rich libraries of clip-art that everyone can 
    easily integrate into their text files-- if only the word-
    processors are revised to make this easier.  

    But (alas!) the word-processor designers seem preoccupied with 
    GIFs and MPEGs and WAV files...  


    jorn barger
    chicago, illinois, usa
    sept 11 1995


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