[ Thanks to Wendell
Cochran for this link. ]
“Neal Stephenson’s essay “In the Beginning Was the Command
Line,”…is now out in paperback in expanded form. Like the
author’s recent novel, Cryptonomicon, this rumination on the
history and significance of computer interfaces is prolix,
detailed, taxing, and delightful. For every instance of
lingering on a technical detail — say, the meaning in Unix of “/
usr/ etc/ var/ bin/ proc/ boot/ home/ root/ sbin/ dev/ lib/ tmp” —
Stephenson serves up lines like the following: “Unix … is not so
much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of
the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic.”
“In the Beginning” is a travelogue of sorts, an explorer’s
journal. It’s about Stephenson’s progress from teletype command
line to graphical user interface (GUI) to the combination of
command line and GUI he finds in BeOS (an operating system
discussed in a section titled, in typically Stephensonian fashion,
“Etre”). The essay is a kind of vision quest by interface. If, as
some say, to design an interface is to make culture and to
criticize one is to engage in cultural criticism then, based on “In
the Beginning” alone, Stephenson is a cultural critic beyond
compare.”