Introduction
In preparation for our next reading, I would like to review the following notions and terms, and how they look. Those terms/notions are the terminal and a GUI (Graphical User Interface, sometimes pronounced like the word "gooey").
Although not all the examples shown below show the terminal with a black background (in most contemporary versions you can customize this), the essay we will look at frames the GUI as the current default operating system expression, and the terminal as "backwards" and frames the "blackness" of the terminal as a way to talk about race and power in computer history.
If you're interested you can read the essay, or start looking at it here. It is called Black Gooey Universe by American Artist
Terminals + command lines
Terminal is an app you use to perform tasks using a command line interface (CLI) in macOS.
— Apple, Get started with Terminal on Mac
Image source: Marcin Wichary's GUIdebook — command prompts.
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
A graphical user interface (GUI) is a user interface that incorporates graphical elements, such as windows, icons, and buttons […]
— Microsoft 365 Glossary, “Graphical User Interface (GUI)”
Image sources:
- NeXTSTEP: Tim Berners-Lee, The WorldWideWeb browser
- BeOS R5.0.1 Personal Edition — GUIdebook
- Windows 3.1 — GUIdebook
- Mac OS X 10.3 Panther — GUIdebook
Linux desktops: GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce
Image sources: