What It Means for Humanity

For most of history, a fart lasted about a second. And then it was gone.

Today, that changes.

In 12 bytes, a fart can be kept forever, in less space than this sentence.

It can be sent across the world in a text message. It plays the same on every phone. And it never passes through a server.

It can be named. Every recipe gets its own name. The Mighty Foghorn in the Elevator. The Squelchy Duck in the Elevator. The elevator has seen a lot.

And it can be catalogued. There are about 1.5 billion billion billion possible farts. So far, we've catalogued eleven.

Of course, there is more work to do. The format still can't handle the silent ones. We consider this the most important open problem in the field.

Until then, the future of the fart is in your hands. Make one. Send it to a colleague. fartbytes.com