forwardslash lulz
This is silly. The shell is a programming language in itself. You can make it do anything you want. That is why we prefer it to graphical interfaces. You have a fundamentally different relationship with the machine than you do picking from a fixed set of operations via menu or typing. Typing magic words instead of scrolling through a menu is just a cosmetic difference.
Text will always be more powerful than graphics. You can easily memorize thousands of text commands, over a couple years. But scrolling through a drop-down menu or list of a thousand commands will never be fast. Google is an extreme example of this. You couldn't possibly make a graphical interface with the billions of things people want to search. But you already have your language memorized, obviously. There will always be people who want the power and speed of text, and there will always be people who don't want to bother with the memorization.
Not to mention that the user interface of many applications and OS's are changed routinely. Fucking windows "ribbon" menu. Maybe it is superior, but it still sucked to re-familiarize.
Has the author never worked in an Integrated Development Environment? IDE's are a great example of potential directions for OS environments. Or am I wrong?