Ladies and Gentlemen.

The seriousness of environmental issues on the planet is recognized globally. Many countries and institutions have tackled these problems through various projects; however, the global trend of environmental degradation is still continuing. Humanity is still burning millions of barrels of oil every day, and still emits millions of tons of pollution into the air.

Today, every effort to end the oil age and switch to the clean, environmentally friendly alternatives should be publicly recognized, emphasized, and supported. As part of the international environmental movement, today UNESCO officially announces an ASCII art sequence representing the electricity or electrical nature of something. The ASCII sequence consists of two characters, plus and minus, enclosed in square brackets.

[+-]

The ASCII sequence represents the bi-polar nature of electricity, and is clearly recognized as an electric battery, a key element in many electric applications.

The sequence can be informally referenced to as “the electric emoticon”, although technically speaking it is not an emoticon.

The sequence can be used as a separate word replacing such words as “electric”, “electrical” or “electricity”. It can also be used as a prefix for anything electrical or electric-powered, such as Electric Cars, Electric Engines, Electric Technologies and alike, so those can be written as follows: [+-]Car, [+-]Engine, [+-]Technology.

In response to many requests, we also announce today the short form of the sequence, which omits the square brackets. Therefore, the preceding examples could be also written as: +-Car, +-Engine, +-Technology.

The sequence should be pronounced as the word which it replaces, “electric”, “electrical” or “electricity”, but not “plus minus”.

We believe that the introduction of the ASCII sequence will serve for the popularization of clean, environmentally friendly technologies. We hope that the global trend of the growing demand for electric applications will continue as well as the usage of the electric emoticon.

Thank you. I will now take any questions you might have.

When do you expect the new electric infrastructure will mature enough, so we can declare that the oil age is over?

That is a big question. It would require reconstructing the whole electric grid as we know it today. It will require not only technological, but also social reforms. All the major aspects of the problem will be discussed at the [+-]2.0 Word Summit in San Francisco later this year.

Do you think we might expect to see +-Kettle or +-Shaver price tags in the supermarkets soon?

I don’t see why not. Once it is publicly accepted, we might start seeing it everywhere.