Understanding The Business of Software

Stephenson, Neal. “In the Beginning was the Command Line.” Harper Collins. 9 November 1999. Web. 24 February 2010 .

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In late 1999, Neal Stephenson published his informative, yet extensive essay discussing the technological world of computer operating systems. He titled his essay, “In the beginning…was the command line” to illustrate that computers operate by the production companies typing specific in depth codes into particular command lines. This allows the user to simply click on an icon or a menu to make the computer perform the task they need it to. However, Stephenson believes that the user population as a whole would be much more empowered if we had the slightest comprehension of what we were actually doing. Throughout the article, he goes into a deep discussion on the history, overall purpose, and his hypothesis of the future of operating systems. He goes into great detail about the major computer corporations, such as Microsoft and Macintosh, and the software they produce. He discusses the manner in which each company goes about selling their products and the new forms of computers they produce. He also discusses the production of the free software companies such as GUI and Linux. In Stephenson’s opinion, the free software companies have the potential of overtaking the major corporations and controlling the world of operating systems.

After reading and analyzing the article, the author’s point of view, purpose, and values are clearly evident. Stephenson commends the free software companies for what they are doing and fully agrees with their overall message. All of the computer users around the world should have some say in what exactly their software does, and truly understand what exactly it does. His point of view is clearly important because he is making a bold statement and opinion about the future of technology and what its’ overall purpose should be. To allow the reader to get a better understanding of his overall message, he uses countless metaphors effectively throughout the article. These metaphors also allow the reader to understand what it is that computers really do. The reader is capable of seeing that the production companies do all the technological work, and install codes so that the user can easily do anything they need to. By the conclusion of the article, Stephenson hopes to have influenced the reader to desire to grasp a better understand of their computer, and have a greater understanding of the free software that is available for them.