I have used DOS, GEM, Windows, and (now) Linux operating systems. But we have hardly advanced, conceptually, beyond GEM and Windows of 1985. Here is my proposal for a major advance. In 1987, the DOS game Yes Prime Minister (a mere quarter megabyte in size), enabled one to open doors and drawers, switch on the telex, and so on, and generally wander around parliament. One was immersed in a visual environment. Imagine now that an operating system would offer a visual (even audio) environment of one's choice: the houses of parliament, a log cabin, a spacecraft to Mars, and so on. So one might see the weather through the window, a clock on the wall, keep some files in a drawer, a telex on the desk, among other things. However it would be more like the real world -- or a real world, any world -- than clicking on symbols on a screen (or touching them) as we have done for more than thirty years. As early as 1987, Yes Prime Minister proved that this idea would be possible. OBSERVATION: In the interests of this post, I opened DOS on Linux, and played a few minutes of the old 1987 Yes Prime Minister.
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