[grandiego]

The #38 is controversial as noted. To me it represents the branching of Unix flavors, mostly derived from the AT&T and BSD versions (represented by the glasses.)

[nine_k]

To me, the stuff that grows from a shell invocation must be a process tree.

[tempodox]

Quite. I felt reminded of Git but it did not exist yet in the 1980s.

[k3vinw]

Interesting. When I look at this I see printed circuitry like you would find on a PCB. In which case it could represent the electrons flowing downwards into the processor which powers the shell. And the power source might be the wizard himself or his beard.

[righthand]

The power source is the fire underneath the shell.

[k3vinw]

Ahh. Good point! Perhaps a better analogy would be that the brain processing power is represented by the circuitry. I’d be curious to other interpretations for why it appears where it does.