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| In The Beginning Was The Command Line |
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posted by Editor
on Monday March 13, @05:46PM
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Neal Stephenson is perhaps best known for his novel Snow Crash, which blended the themes of computer science, biotechnology, religion, and extreme capitalism into a compelling vision of the web's future as a parallel, virtual reality world. In this essay, he argues that most current graphical interfaces abuse the power of metaphor in order to make computers accessible to a larger audience. These interfaces inherently introduce a bias into the computing experience that weakens the ability for users to exploit the computer's real potential, and molds users with cultural influences that are defined by the suppliers of the interface. Since the command line continues to exist as a kind of "brainstem reflex" for the computer, it remains the closest one can reasonably get to the system's core function, which is to manipulate strings of bits. Stephenson has a unique ability to balance interpretations of technology and pop-culture trends, and this piece is an entertaining read, touching on Disney, Microsoft, the Mac-Windows religious wars, BeOS, the Linux phenomenon, and many other topics.
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