See The World In ASCII

This low-tech spin on Google Street View turns the world into a mid-80s computer printout.

Times Square

Basically, any place with a Google Street View panorama can now be viewed in ASCII. It's a really cool trick! It's possible thanks to a bunch of open Google Street View tools and this Canadian guy, who's been working on ASCII transformations for a while.

(One caveat: the map search is a little hinky, so you may need to click around the area a few times before the site finds a panorama to load.)

It's particularly fun because Google's been building out Street View for quite a while now, so the database really does show some of the more interesting places on Earth — all of which now can look like a computer printout from the mid-80s. For instance:

Here's the Oval Office.

Here's a Shinto Shrine in Itsukushima.

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