In the Beginning was the Command Line In the Beginning was the Command Line In his 1999 essay "In the beginning was the Command Line", Neal Stephenson argues why Microsoft took over the world's computer software business (to now become the most valuable company in the world that doesn't build anything tangible). It was through their GUI - Windows. Neal Stephenson does not like GUIs. Microsoft took over, and not hobbyists like Wozniak or Stallman, who cared more deeply about computer speed, executive function, error handling, and utility value. Stephenson then makes a prediction. But 26 years later, his prediction has not come be pass. He says on page 17; Microsoft dominates the OS market, which makes them money and seems like a nice idea for now. But cheaper and better OSes are available, and they are growing popular in parts of the world that are not so saturated with computers as the US. Ten years from now, most of the world's computer users may end up owning the cheaper OSes. But these OSes do not, for the time being, run any Microsoft applications, and so these people will use something else." Being a computing puritan raised on OG skills such as coding on a teletype (think of it as an early keyboard which was connected to a literal bits-punching machine. The bits-punching sound would be relayed to a mainframe computer at some university via a dial-up modem. The original type that looked like a clunky landline phone. The bitwise arithmetic would be done, and the solution of the program run sent back via beeping sounds which were converted from binary to human-readable language, then printed on a rolling tape. Stephenson can thus be forgiven his stickler-ness to practices as removed from modern computing life as hunter-gathering is from modern day homo sapiens. What he didn't imagine arising from Microsoft's corporate offices was; VS Code, which most programmers use on their local machines. Emacs is too powerful. GitHub for programmers on the web. Plus Copilot for programmers on the web who want to move fast.ChatGPT for non-programmers, non-animators, non-writers, non-poets who want to try at any of those things enough to be hired or sell products in those categories in a shorter time. Which people have done? VS Code, which most programmers use on their local machines. Emacs is too powerful. GitHub for programmers on the web. Plus Copilot for programmers on the web who want to move fast. ChatGPT for non-programmers, non-animators, non-writers, non-poets who want to try at any of those things enough to be hired or sell products in those categories in a shorter time. Which people have done? So, it's been 26 years since Stephenson's essay, and Microsoft has never been bigger and richer. Why? Easy - They control the flow. Which keeps them enjoying major mindshare. What is the flow? - The distribution chain. Control the paths where products will pass, and you can sell even free software en masse. See, the fact that digital products can be copied cheaply is no longer a problem of digital businesses anymore. Distribution chains are the new oil. Because a year later, all digital products are virtually free, be it million-dollar-in-production-cost movies, music, podcasts, digital books, mobile apps, etc. The money is to be made at the point where people want access. Access to what? A voice, power. The company of the company. If you want to be Taylor Swift's favorite fan, you make sure you support her before her music is released. She will reciprocate, because we all value those who value us. If you only listen to her song for free a month later, don't whine when she doesn't notice you in her comments feed. This is why Bitcoin Treasury companies are blowing up. People want access to massive capital pools as close to policymakers as possible. Not because they want Bitcoins. If you wanted bitcoins, you'd open an app, get some, et cetera. But quiet wealth can be a burden. Rather, get into a club where you have not just the money but a new brotherhood that has your back. Some people think it's Ponzi, raising so much capital to buy Bitcoin in anticipation of a price hike from scarcity. Debt capital, mind you, not bootstrapping. I say it's the creation of a new wealth class as accelerated by Bitcoin's scarcity (if that can be called a "product"). A new reason to unite humans in a divided world, with wars going on for no clear reasons, I can state. Again, people who want bitcoins can buy bitcoins. People who want stocks and a community in Strategy with access ti their partners, could buy $MSTR and the 3 other stocks and co-mingle with the financial literati of the day. Also, believing in a magical future utility/value proposition is easier than building real world utility with Bitcoin. Or a functional Linux OS. That said, Stephenson got one thing right. How badly we want things to be easier can be measured by the size of Bill Gates's fortune. Now, Michael Saylor's. Since it's really big, it means that when it comes to computers, people want things to get as easy as possible. Set up my own OS with Linux? My own programming environment with Emacs? My own encrypted messaging with PGP? My own air-gapped Bitcoin hardware wallet? Just give me the fully-made and pre-packaged product please. I have myself and a family to take care of through my real job. Plug and play is the way. No wonder Microsoft Windows was the unbeaten champion of gaming OSes for decades with DirectX drivers and stuff. No wonder they own Activision and Minecraft and would've owned Roblox if it didn't look too much like Minecraft. On page 29, Stephenson predicts Tesla Motors: But if cars had been invented after Macintoshes (Stephenson is an Apple guy when he is not using a customized Linux), ... we would have a computer screen instead of a dashboard ... and we'd shift gears by pulling down a menu". Now we have Bitcoin Now we have Bitcoin Bitcoin OS Last year, I toyed with the idea of getting a new laptop to run Bitcoin. Alas, the damn costs. Bitcoin is the only software in the world that is NOT cheap to run. It consumes electricity and internet data like a bugger just to get it up and running. I gave up. I still run Windows on a clunky PC. Why? Well, Bitcoin is money. But I want to run it like an OS. Not a GUI, a Command Line. Like Neal Stephenson. Don't try to stop me. Come to think of it, I could rebuild Emacs but for a Bitcoin writer. First things first would be to make the ₿ symbol easy to access. Thank Richard Stallman for the Free Software Foundation. Now we just need a Free Bitcoin Software Foundation. Though Bitcoin is not only too expensive to attract an army of Linux devs to build free tools for it, Bitcoin is also not Turing complete. Coding software for it or on it is thus a tall order. But imo, its community is Turing complete, and you can build anything you want there. I'd say the real OS is not the computer system. It is the community. Some systems are files and folders e.g., Bitcoin Wallets for our coins, others are encryption standards for our secrets e.g., Nostr. Others, like Strategy, offer a corporate community where people invest time and money together and gain together. Speculating at the speed of thought on Bitcoin's hour-by-hour, day-by-day, month-by-month value proposition in an ever-changing economic climate. All that has to be done is to let go of the fear and to build. Could Bitcoiners fail? Could my Bitcoin experiments fail? Well, could GNU have failed when Richard Stallman decided to create it? Yeah. But people have rallied to his side and now, there's such a big ecosystem I'm considering running Linux (to create my Bitcoin OS). Bitcoin is the Super Spider of the WWW Bitcoin is the Super Spider of the WWW In the beginning was the command line, then there was the World Wide Web, and along came a spider. A Bitcoin spider. It started by biting Satoshi Nakamoto. Oh no, he didn't create it, he found it. Like a 4D creature, it travelled from the future to 2008 and it bit him. He then pulled it from 4D space into our reality. Now, it has bitten countless others, turning us into Bitcoin Spidermen and Spiderwomen. It is weaving a Spiderverse. The real Spider-verse. Ya'll not ready for it, but it will be evident to you soon enough. They do not yet have superpowers, these spider people. So you laugh and mock them when their dreams of a world without senseless debt misery crumble. But they will get stronger. The Bitcoin spider verse is being woven. Woven in an imperfect world with imperfect parts. Sometimes, using pure garbage to run an iteration of its web. And there will be villains. Lots of villains. But there will be victories. Lots of victories. Some people might say Bitcoin is a virus. But viruses are inherently evil creatures. So let's call Bitcoin a superhero meme. Which is what it is. You get it from the Bitcoin ecosystem (which has its many spider legs in software, finance, art, philosophy, politics, and news. It will soon beat Google's spiders), and you cannot remain the same. You cannot remain uninspired to do something worthwhile. That's impossible. The truth shall set you free, not bind you. And few things unlock truths about the world as fast as Bitcoin does. Hype and all. But truths are not enough. As Microsoft has shown us, controlling the distribution centers is the game. And what do you know, Bitcoin, like a Trojan horse, is being adopted by Banks left, right, and center. The Kings of product distribution (they distribute money like nobody can). The truth will transform our bankers into better people. It is already doing it in fact, with many of them calling out things in a way that Bankers decades prior would have been happy sweeping under the carpet of global finance. Eventually, one day, we shall have a FED chair who is a Bitcoiner. Only pressing the buttons when needed. For example, when called on to spend real Bitcoin as slowly as possible, some dilution might be necessary. Then we shall have an army of men and women who are Bitcoiners. Only fighting when need arises, but always being ready. More ready, in fact, than the fiat-era armies. Spidermen and Spiderwomen of the future (and not nearly as broke as Peter Parker). It will be wondrous. Bitcoin needs Time Bitcoin needs Time What will it take to have genius devs and genius writers, novelists, engineers, teachers, and economists recognized worldwide because of Bitcoin? Time. Time is Bitcoin's greatest weapon. Because society, over time, learns even the most arcane technology. Time is fiat currency's greatest enemy. Time will Bitcoinize us all, just like time turned us all into social media afficionados. Because you see, nothing is as basic as tracking human labour value. And nothing tracks it faster than digital money. And no digital money beats Bitcoin. Bitcoin Treasuries today may be an overhyped innovation because the value proposition is still hard to get around. But over time, we all buy and trade real Bitcoin. On the software side, PewDiePie has started running Linux. I, too, want to run Linux. Over a long enough timeline, people tend to become OG computer users like Neal Stephenson and Richard Stallman. AND Bitcoiners. For running computers to build digital products for a fiat foundation is not the epitome of OG deving. If the programming is to remain pure, then the foundations should remain pure. Alas, time is our enemy too, as human beings. But with the grace of God, we shall be content being humble Bitcoiner servants. Servants of each other, like the Lord Jesus, teach us.

The is an opinion piece based on the author’s POV and does not necessarily reflect the views of HackerNoon.

Apple

dashboard

GitHub

Super

I2ShowSpeed With My HackerNoon Articles on Bitcoin

Bitcoin - King of Speculation [HackerNoon Edition]

Read My Stories

Buy Me a Coffee

Hire Me

Too Long; Didn't Read

In The Beginning Was The Command Line ... Then There Was Bitcoin

In The Beginning Was The Command Line ... Then There Was Bitcoin

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Untitled Story

2001: A Bitcoin Odyssey

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro, and NFT Bro - The Evolution of Identity in the Digital World

15 Bitcoin Insights Spock Would've Shared

5 Types of Bitcoin Scaling Solutions You Should Consider

7th US President Andrew Jackson's Thoughts on Cryptocurrency

2001: A Bitcoin Odyssey

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro, and NFT Bro - The Evolution of Identity in the Digital World

15 Bitcoin Insights Spock Would've Shared

5 Types of Bitcoin Scaling Solutions You Should Consider

7th US President Andrew Jackson's Thoughts on Cryptocurrency

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps