The author seems to be arguing that "most general" = "best" - because text is the most general communication format, it's the best. This argument is pretty tri

The author seems to be arguing that "most general" = "best" - because text is the most general communication format, it's the best. This argument is pretty trivially false. By this logic, the best programming language is assembly, because it's the most general. Actually, writing opcodes directly might be more general, in case your assembler doesn't have translations for some undocumented opcodes. The best editor would be a hex editor. The best web browser would be netcat piped into a hex editor, as well. The best OS would be no OS at all (because OSes impose restrictions in order to make programming easier and safer). The best application, for any kind of application, would be an interpreter that would allow you to create your own, however you wanted. Engineering is necessarily a tradeoff between generality and efficiency. Technology is largely used to make things more efficient, and so our tools always impose some constraints on the problem/solution space in order to be more efficient than not using that tool. A common design pattern is a specialized fast-path and slower (but more general) fallback. In addition, as many others have stated here: "the right tool for the right job". Videos, audio, pictures, and interactive tools will always be more efficient for certain problems. If your sole concern is generality, then yes, by all means, use text. However, this will almost never happen; your design space will almost always necessitate a tradeoff of generality with efficiency - in which case, pure plain text is rarely the solution.