The Return of the Terminal
Forty years ago, all you had was the terminal. Now it's back thanks to AI and voice.
Forty years ago, all you had was the terminal. It was the interface to computing – simple, text-based, easy for a computer to parse, and extremely efficient. Then we built GUIs because humans are visual beings.
As Neal Stephenson wrote, “In the Beginning was the Command Line.” Now, for the first time in a long while, we have a genuinely new interface: the conversation. We talk. Maybe we draw occasionally, but mainly we just talk. And talking turns out to be extremely efficient.
This means the terminal is back. I don’t need a GUI to do most things anymore. I can just dictate, and that becomes my interface to nearly everything. The conversation *is* the terminal.
There’s a deeper reason for this return. Command-line tools are very efficient for AI, and they’re faster. An AI doesn’t care about a GUI – in fact, a GUI is *harder* for an AI to process. The same properties that made the terminal powerful in 1985 – text in, text out, composable, scriptable – make it the natural interface for AI in 2026.
We’ve come full circle.
Original transcript (dictated)
once upon a time, 40 years ago, all you had was the terminal in computing. that was the interface you had because it’s very simple, text-based, easy for a computer to parse, and very efficient. we built guis (graphical user interfaces) because humans are visual beings.
this is aside, but in the beginning was the command line, as neil stephenson’s little book goes. now, for the first time in computing for a long time, we have a new interface: the conversation interface. we’re going to talk, maybe we’ll draw, but mainly we could just talk. talking is extremely efficient, and that is what i’m doing right now: i’m dictating, and that means the terminals are back. in a way, i don’t need to go into a gui to do a lot of things anymore. maybe occasionally, but actually i can just dictate; that’s becoming the interface to most things, and that’s the terminal.
there’s a kind of return of the terminal or the return of command-line tools, because they’re very efficient for ai, and they’re faster. the ai doesn’t care about gui; it’s actually harder for an ai to process a gui.