Command Prompt

To continue the previous post by Graf, I found a refreshing idea in the season two of LOST, where in an underground complex, on an island where a bunch of survivors from a plane crash are dwelling, there is a computer with magnetic tape closets and a very old-fashioned command prompt on a black and green monitor. The operator must enter a code in the computer every 108 minutes, or the electromagnetic force discharges in an unpleasent manner.

Command prompt is a sort of rack and pinion steering, whereas the GUI, or the graphical user interface contains a bunch of servos that hide the machinery underneath. It's been hard to find the realistic depiction of command line in the movie industry, ever since “Wake up Neo” and even there it was a very eloquent prompt. What LOST managed to maintain is the unservoed, rack and pinion, lever-style prompt with a simple syntax that does the job for years. Undeground, hidden and world-saving, the command prompt in LOST definitely sticks to the Borghesian idea that points of control are lever buried deep under, in the subterranean realms of either material or spiritual world, where a single push of the button can change everything.

There is a striking resemblance with another kind of button that pops in and out of public consciousness...depending on the public interest of the moment, but is always there, regardless of our attitudes and philosophies. It's a reminder of the elapsing 108 minutes until the next push that TOTALS and resets the score.