[Neal Stephenson In The Beginning Was The Command Line]
[Wikipedia Introduction]

Technische Details kommen in dieser umfangreichen Geschichte der Betriebssysteme fast nicht vor und streckenweise wird Stephenson doch arg anekdotenselig. Trotzdem ist es durchaus lohnend, den Essay zu lesen. Besonders interessant sind die Passagen übers Mainframe Computing und Unix. Wenig überraschend gibt es Elogen für Linux und BeOS. Nicht wirklich überzeugen konnte mich Stephenson mit seinem Versuch, den Erfolg des GUI in einen größeren gesellschaftlichen Kontext zu stellen (über den Umweg eines Vergleichs mit Disney):

"Disney World works the same way. If you are an intellectual type, a reader or writer of books, the nicest thing you can say about this is that the execution is superb. But it's easy to find the whole environment a little creepy, because something is missing: the translation of all its content into clear explicit written words, the attribution of the ideas to specific people. You can't argue with it. It seems as if a hell of a lot might be being glossed over, as if Disney World might be putting one over on us, and possibly getting away with all kinds of buried assumptions and muddled thinking. But this is precisely the same as what is lost in the transition from the command-line interface to the GUI.
Disney and Apple/Microsoft are in the same business: short-circuiting laborious, explicit verbal communication with expensively designed interfaces."