the.com/format
The container deciding whether your genius survives being opened in ten years.
means The structure or arrangement that determines how information is organized, stored, or presented.
from From French 'format,' borrowed from Latin 'formatus' (shaped, formed), the past participle of 'formare' (to form), itself from 'forma' (shape, mold). It entered English in the 1800s through printing and publishing, describing the size and shape of a book — the physical mold pages were cast into before the word wandered into photography, computing, and every other field needing a word for 'the shape data takes.'
- longevity bet
- pdf and plain text outlive every fancy app that made them
- hidden politics
- choosing docx vs markdown is choosing an ecosystem, not a file
- vhs vs betamax
- format wars are usually won by convenience, not quality
- irony
- universal formats like csv break the moment someone adds a comma