Why Plain Text Is Still One of the Best Technologies We Have
The article argues that plain text remains a superior technology due to its simplicity, longevity, and independence from specific software applications. It highlights how plain text serves as the foundational layer for modern computing, including source code and web infrastructure.
Why it matters
Understanding the durability of plain text is essential for long-term data preservation and digital literacy in an era of proprietary software.
There are not many computer file formats I would trust to still be readable fifty years from now, but plain text is one of them. That may sound like faint praise. A text file cannot embed a spreadsheet, preserve elaborate page layouts, run a presentation, or provide many of the conveniences we expect from modern applications. What it does instead is store text in one of the simplest and most widely understood forms in computing, and that simplicity is a large part of why it has lasted.
The Unicode Standard defines plain text essentially as a sequence of character codes, without the additional formatting information associated with rich text. Fonts, colors, layout, and similar presentation details belong somewhere else.
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