Career

Autobiograghy

Early Life and Upbringing

Why Terry Davis was so influential

TempleOS (known as "J Operating System" from 2004 to 2005 and "LoseThos" from 2006 to 2012) is an operating system similar to the Commodore 64, DESQview and other early DOS-based interfaces. It was conceived by Davis in the early 2000s and developed alone over the course of a decade. This included the design of its original programming language, editor, compiler and kernel. It was ultimately composed of over 100,000 lines of code.
In 2005, Davis stated that his ambition for the J Operating System was "to recreate the dynamic environment that used to exist when the Commodore 64 was around and everyone was creating odd-ball software". He envisioned the system as a Commodore 64 with a "thousand times" more powerful processing speed. Three years later, he wrote that the primary purpose of LoseThos was "for making video games. It has no networking or Internet support. As far as I'm concerned, that would be reinventing the wheel".
Davis later proclaimed that he was in direct communication with God, and that God told him to build a successor to the Second Temple as an operating system. As such, references to Biblical tropes are ubiquitous in the OS. One bundled program, "After Egypt", is a game in which the player travels to a burning bush to use a "high-speed stopwatch". The stopwatch is meant to act as an oracle that generates pseudo-random text, something Davis believed to be coded messages from God. He likened the process to a Ouija board and speaking in tongues. An example of generated text follows:
among consigned penally result perverseness checked stated held sensation reasonings skies adversity Dakota lip Suffer approached enact displacing feast Canst pearl doing alms comprehendeth nought
According to Davis, many of the system's features, such as its 640x480 resolution and 16-color display, were also explicit instructions from God. The charter on his website stated that TempleOS was "God's official temple. Just like Solomon's Temple, this is a community focal point where offerings are made and God's oracle is consulted". He used the oracle to ask God about war ("servicemen competing"), death ("awful"), dinosaurs ("Brontosaurs' feet hurt when stepped"), favorite video game (Donkey Kong), favorite car (BMW), favorite national anthem (Latvia's), favorite band (the Beatles), and the 11th commandment ("Thou shall not litter").
In 2012, Davis stated that LoseThos was downloaded 10,000 times since 2009, and that there was "no evidence anyone has installed it. I am in a CIA prison." Later in the year, he renamed LoseThos to "SparrowOS", and in early 2013, rebranded again as "TempleOS". A few weeks later, his website announced: "God's temple is finished. Now, God kills CIA until it spreads".
All info has been gathered from wikipedia as well as the official templeOS website, however I do not know how to properly site sources.

temple os logo