we've all heard about cyberpunk and cipherpunk, but here's something new:
textpunk.
That's right. Textpunk
Newspaper articles, BBSs (like this one), IRC, ASCII art, Kopipe, program source code, Novels, View HTML source, Google search engine, Mathematics, Hieroglyphics, The Rosetta Stone, Gutenberg Bible...
A textpunk doesn't sit there waiting for information to be slowly fed to him drip at a time by the gogglebox. A textpunk is thirsty for knowledge and 100% focused - they read old school hacker textfile zines. They don't waste their time with lame imageboarders: instead they're doing crazy abstract shitposting on /prog/ with thoughts and concepts twisted up so with many levels of irony that it becomes an art form.
Textpunks recognize and understand the true power of kopipe - how a well crafted piece of text can be so damn powerful that it alone can trigger thousands of replies with so much veracity within days. They see through things down into the core of what really counts, everything in the computer is built of text, ascii, strings of bits - They don't care about the latest 3D GUI environment fads. No, that's just a distraction. 7-bit clean ascii program source code. That's textpunk.
Look at how text has shaped humanity: The birth of writing systems was correlated with some of fastest advances of science and technology in early human history. Mass production of the Bible took power away from a few select monks and democratized paving the way for people to start thinking for themselves. Programming is text and it's the closest thing there is in the world to true wizardy and spell casting. Talking about real SICP-type programming here, not that modern garbage.
Today textpunks build up digital libraries of books and stick it to the copyright cartel. Schwarz, lib gen, the gentoomen library, and so many anonymous sources that tireless scan and collect books.. Textpunks are the people in tune with modern digital society of ultrafast cost-free transmission of text, they're the ones rethinking and revolutionizing publishing mixing it with open rights and making works available online.
>>1
cringey but mildly interesting. keep working on it.
We need to bring back gopher.
typing .NFO files in dosbox like it's 1994
>>3
I never even got to know what gopher was back then since had had no computer when I was a kid let alone internet.
You misunderstand the reason for ASCIIpunk:
Computers have gotten considerably more powerful, but they are being bottlenecked by the software that is running on them, it is bloated, horrible, interpreted languages and hugely extravegant GUIs are used for simple programs, weighing them down. ASCIIpunk is not a lust for the past, it is the trimming of needless fat from software in order that software that actually needs to be demanding (rendering, compiling etc) has as many system resources avalible to it. We are the rebellion against the culture of NodeJS, Microsoft and other such retardation.
>>7
I agree with all of your points, but interpreted languages aren't necessarily bad, it's just that most interpreters for modern languages are horribly optimized. It is possible to make an optimized interpreter, however, it requires a lot of low level knowledge similar to that of optimizing a compiler. Most language developers probably don't want to deal with those types of things.
Currently programming a BBS server with Python :^)
Text is great, OP. I highly recommend this shrine to the almighty textfile: http://textfiles.com/directory.html
Here's a pile of ancient anime textfiles too: http://www.nt2099.com/OSA/text/misc/
This Maison Ikkoku guide textfile set has always amazed me with the amount of work and care put into it: http://ikkoku.com/mi/html/guide.html From ASCII art of character names in Kanji, to detailed conventions/schemes for information, to all matter of detailed data, this was a real love letter to the textfile.
I think it would also be amazing to use an authentic CRT serial terminal for the Linux console, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh6UJqY1X8U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dgKFa2JXLo
"If you know the name of a spirit, you have power over it"...Gerald Sussman (your SICP ref reminded me of this).
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world"-Wittgenstein.
Text is the workhorse and meat and potatoes of CS, and old textfiles are a treasure trove of hacking, phreaking, CS, and anime history (along with loads more subjects)
>>10
Wow, the Maison Ikkoku guide looks great! Clearly a lot of work and love was poured into these files.
Textfiles are special, in that their basic appearance is the default, while extravagant files are rare and need to be carefully prepared in order to creatively sidestep the limitations.
Meanwhile, on the www the basic appearance is shunned. Everything is flashy, colorful, sometimes it's hard to parse information and when you disable css, many sites are unusable.
I wish the www was more limited, more like it used to be.
Whenever I design a website, I try to keep it as unflashy and small and simple as possible: I find that websites which work on text-mode browsers are the most usable ones, even on graphical browsers.
text on its side :^)
！！
Thought that http://txti.es/textpunk would be relevant.