Who We Are xxiWho We Are
We are academics, hackers, and professionals. None of us were born in the
computing analog of Ken Pier’s East Africa. We have all experienced
much more advanced, usable, and elegant systems than Unix ever was, or
ever can be. Some of these systems have increasingly forgotten names,
such as TOPS-20, ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System), Multics,
Apollo Domain, the Lisp Machine, Cedar/Mesa, and the Dorado. Some of
us even use Macs and Windows boxes. Many of us are highly proficient
programmers who have served our time trying to practice our craft upon
Unix systems. It’s tempting to write us off as envious malcontents, roman-
tic keepers of memories of systems put to pasture by the commercial suc-
cess of Unix, but it would be an error to do so: our judgments are keen, our
sense of the possible pure, and our outrage authentic. We seek progress, not
the reestablishment of ancient relics.