[rdtsc]

JSON is readable in small quantities. A 100MB JSON file is just as readable as a 100MB binary file, except it is slower and bigger to parse.

Also unless you can see electrons bouncing on the wire, JSON is readable because there is a program that decodes and shows it to you. It would probably take a couple of lines of code in python to cat a msgpack file.

[icebraining]

Displaying files is not the only way to read JSON. I've often read it on the browser development tools, on Wireshark, on tcpdump, etc.