Always bet on text

Canonical version: Always bet on text.

Essay by Graydon Hoare (creator of the Rust programming language). His thesis: "text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period." When in doubt, default to text.

Why text wins

• Durability — Text outlasts every other medium. We still read 5,000-year-old inscriptions; it can be carved into granite to outlive humanity itself.
• Flexibility — Text conveys complex, abstract ideas with precise control over ambiguity. No picture can express "Human rights are moral principles or norms…".
• Efficiency — Orders of magnitude fewer bytes than audio, images, or video. A whole blog post can weigh less than a single small icon.
• Historical precedent — Communication tech always adopts text first (optical telegraphs in the 1790s), then voice and video much later, only once bandwidth gets cheap.
• Social utility — Text alone enables indexing, search, translation, async exchange, and multi-party editing. Libraries and forums show a depth no other medium matches.

My take

This is the philosophical backbone of why a Plain Text / Markdown approach to knowledge beats proprietary, media-heavy tools. The argument that text is durable and tool-independent is exactly the File over app principle: your files should outlive the app that made them. It's also why Obsidian; plain Markdown files on disk you fully own; is a sound bet for Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), and a concrete instance of Local-First Software. Betting on text is betting that your knowledge stays readable, searchable, and yours for decades.

References

• https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html

Related

• Graydon Hoare
• File over app principle
• Obsidian
• Plain Text
• Markdown
• Local-First Software
• Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

About Sébastien

I'm Sébastien Dubois, and I'm on a mission to help knowledge workers escape information overload. After 20+ years in IT and seeing too many brilliant minds drowning in digital chaos, I've decided to help people build systems that actually work. Through the Knowii Community, my courses, products & services and my Website/Newsletter, I share practical and battle-tested systems.

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