The best description of it is probably still in Licklider’s Man-Computer

Symbiosis & Englebart’s…

I’ve written some specific recommendations here, with regard to bringing the expressive power & flexibility of command line interfaces to…

The best description of it is probably still in Licklider’s Man-Computer Symbiosis & Englebart’s Augmenting Human Intellect. However, this kind of symbiotic relationship is familiar to any developer who frequently does iterative development in a REPL — which is to say, almost everybody who develops in a scripting language on a unix.

I’ve written some specific recommendations here, with regard to bringing the expressive power & flexibility of command line interfaces to the GUI realm:

[ Some tentative guidelines for GUI composability
Introduction hackernoon.com](https://hackernoon.com/some-tentative- guidelines-for-gui-composability-2900abead1d9 "https://hackernoon.com/some- tentative-guidelines-for-gui- composability-2900abead1d9")[](https://hackernoon.com/some-tentative- guidelines-for-gui-composability-2900abead1d9)

As for forces that oppose this, I’d have to just point at lack of political will, short-termism, a focus on marketability and backward compatibility, and a general lack of interest in empowering people when it doesn’t add to the bottom line.

(In other words, capitalism.)

By John Ohno on February 25, 2018.

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-best-description-of-it-is- probably-still-in-lickliders-man-computer-symbiosis-englebart-s-a03143bc81b7)

Exported from Medium on September 18, 2020.