Command Line and the Uncool Aspects of the Matrix - DiMe Piece #6

Some of my friends don't agree, but I think The Matrix Trilogy is probably one of the best trilogies made in the last twenty years. I understand that Neo was a digital version of Jesus Christ, and so I wasn't disappointed by the way the last movie ended. Cypher isn't the most loved character of "The Matrix," but I can relate to his position. The world he knew was traded with one decision, and he didn't like the harshness of the reality that he got in return. He became the movie's second villain, all because he preferred to live in the code and renounce all memory of the truth.

Let's put all the cool stuff about the movies, like being able to learn things instantly or defy gravity, aside and think about the weirdness of having to see buildings, people, cars and everything you have visual knowledge and understandings of in code. Think about every aspect of the way you engage with your surroundings being reduced to something two-dimensional that can be written by a 8-year-old, given enough practice. I don't think this paragraph even conveys the strangeness of how weird that is to me. But nobody ever talks about that; the code that makes up The Matrix just because that vehicle that makes what we call reality bendable and manipulable. And it's that thing that makes Keanu Reeves fly.

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So the point of all this is that, to me, command line feels the same way. I'm not exactly a stranger to command line. I was one of those kids lucky enough to be in a school program that exposed me to computers before the advent of Windows 95. As I typed "cd:\games" to access the Jeopardy game that was uploaded with one of those big, actually-floppy disks, I didn't really understand the significance of typing those things. I saw them as simply directions that needed to be followed to get to an objective.

But that was a long, LONG time ago. By the time I really began to understand how computers worked, everything was visual and interactive. Seeing a folder called "Games" and clicking on it to get to a game made more sense to me. Manipulating program operations with mouse-clicks and dialogue boxes is easier to wrap my head around. Watching the visual progress of downloads through colored bars is more comforting to me. Now, our digital methods assignment require that I go back to using command line to some degree.

There's something scary about that black or blue screen with nothing but words. Putting what feels like cold input in and getting cold input back. Errors in command line are scarier than a pop-up box with a harsh-sounding tone; command line errors tend to be longer, and if there's more than one, they seem like they blend together. Doing complicated tasks with command line demands that you make textual pictures of your location and actions rather than rely on the convenience of being able to see things and click on them. I know that command line is a different way of interacting with the same operating systems; I know that it gives me powers to do things that a graphical interface doesn't. I feel like Cypher though; "Yeah, that's cool, but my dinky yellow folders are comforting to me." "It's true that I prefer keyboard shortcuts to leaving the keyboard to move a mouse, but the key word there is 'shortcuts.'" Shortly, I'll begin to engage with data and text using programs that depend on command line. I'll literally be stumbling around in the black, or the blue, trying to figure out what I'm doing. I don't look forward to it with any relish. Maybe with enough practice, I'll become like the heroes of Zion and develop a comfort with seeing my computing world in harsher, less visual terms.