Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 21, 1997
Transcript:
Lars Overshank: Michael, I've just finished conceptualizing a killer app for us to develop. Mike: Outstanding, Lars! Spill, spill! Lars: I call it "legiblis". It's a scanning program that unscrambles computer graphics. For instance, it'd decode a layout from "Wired" magazine so you could actually read it. It would also work on web sites, cleaning up pages automatically as they're downloaded! Mike: Lars, think about this. If you start making text legible, what will people discover about content? Lars: They'll discover that most of it is banal and completely unnecessary to their lives! Mike: And how much do you think they'd pay for a product that demonstrates this? Lars: I'm going on break. Mike: Forest for the trees, Lars, forest for the trees.
Well, we have ad-blockers, and cat videos dominate YouTube regardless of how meaningless they are. I think Lars’ idea does have merit.