Terry A. Davis. Terrence Andrew Davis (December 15, 1969 – August 11, 2018) was an American electrical engineer and computer programmer best known for creating and designing TempleOS, an operating system in the public domain, by himself.

As a teenager, Davis learned assembly language on a Commodore 64. He later earned both a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University. He worked for several years at Ticketmaster on VAX machines. In 1996, he began experiencing regular manic episodes, one of which led him to hospitalization. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared to have schizophrenia. He subsequently collected disability payments and resided in Las Vegas with his parents until 2017.

Growing up Catholic, Davis was an atheist for some of his adult life. After experiencing a self-described "revelation", he proclaimed that he had been in direct communication with God and that God had commanded him to build a successor to the Second Temple. He then committed a decade to creating an operating system modeled after the DOS-based interfaces of his youth. In 2013, Davis announced that he had completed the project, now called "TempleOS". The operating system was generally regarded as a hobby system, not suitable for general use.

Davis amassed an online following and regularly posted video blogs to social media. Although he remained lucid when discussing computer-related subjects, his communication skills were significantly affected by his schizophrenia. He was controversial for his regular use of slurs, which he explained was his way of combating factors of psychological warfare. After 2017, he struggled with periods of homelessness and incarceration. His fans tried to support him by bringing him supplies, but Davis refused their offers. On August 11, 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48.

Early life and career

Davis was born in West Allis, Wisconsin on December 15, 1969, as the seventh of eight children. He later moved to Washington, Michigan, California and Arizona. His father was an industrial engineer. As a child, Davis used an Apple II at his elementary school. As a teenager, he learned assembly language on a Commodore 64.

In 1994, he earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University. For several years he worked at Ticketmaster on VAX machines. On the subject of his certifications, he wrote in 2011: "Everybody knows electrical is higher in the engineering pecking order than CS because it requires real math ;-) I'm a rocket scientist, though, not a very good one".

Onset of illness and spiritual awakening

Davis grew up Catholic, but was an atheist for some of his adult life before experiencing what he called a "revelation from God". Starting in 1996, Davis was admitted to a psychiatric ward around every six months due to reoccurring manic episodes. In March, he had begun experiencing regular manic episodes, and developed delusions centering around space aliens and government agents. According to Davis, he attributed a profound quality to the Rage Against the Machine lyric "some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses" and recalled "I started seeing people following me around in suits and stuff. It just seemed something was strange." He started donating large sums of money to charity organizations, something he had never done before. Later, he surmised, "that act [probably] caused God to reveal Himself to me and saved me."

Out of fear of the figures he believed were following him, Davis drove hundreds of miles south with no destination. After becoming convinced that his car radio was communicating with him, he dismantled his vehicle, apparently in a search for tracking devices he believed were hidden in it, and threw his keys into the desert. He walked along the side of the highway, where he was then picked up by a police officer, who escorted him to the passenger's seat. Davis escaped from the patrol vehicle, breaking his collarbone in the process, and was then hospitalized.

Distressed about a conversation over artifacts found on his X-ray scans, interpreted by him as "alien artifacts", he ran from the hospital. He attempted to carjack a nearby truck before being arrested. In jail, he stripped himself, broke his glasses and jammed the frames into a nearby electrical outlet, trying to open his cell door by switching the breaker. This failed, as he had been wearing non-conductive frames. He was then admitted to a mental hospital for two weeks.

Regarding these developments, Davis said in a 2014 interview that he had been "genuinely pretty crazy in a way. Now I'm not. I'm crazy in a different way maybe." Davis acknowledged that the sequence of events leading to his spiritual awakening might give the impression of mental illness, as opposed to "some glorious revelation from God." Reflecting on the initial episode, he said, "I'm not especially proud of the logic and thinking. It looks very young and childish and pathetic. [...] In the Bible it says if you seek God, He will be found of you. I was really seeking, and I was looking everywhere to see what he might be saying to me."

Davis was initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and later declared to have schizophrenia. Afterward, he felt "guilty for being such a technology-advocate atheist" and tried to follow Jesus by giving away all of his possessions and living a nomadic lifestyle. In July 1996, he returned to Arizona and started formulating plans for a new business. He designed a three-axis milling machine, as he recalled having 3D printing in mind as an obvious pursuit. However, an incident involving a Dremel tool nearly set his apartment on fire, causing him to abandon the idea. He subsequently lived with his parents in Las Vegas and collected Social Security disability payments. He attempted to write a sequel to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but didn't finish it. Davis later wrote that he found work at a company named "Xytec Corp" between 1997 and 1999, making FPGA-based image processing equipment. He said the next two years were spent at H.A.R.E., where he wrote an application called SimStructure, and the two years after that were spent at Graphic Technologies, where he was "head software/electrical engineer".

After 2003, Davis' hospitalizations became less frequent. His schizophrenia still affected his communication skills, and his online comments were usually incomprehensible. However, he was reported as "always lucid" if the topic was about computers. Vice noted that, in 2012, he had a productive conversation with the contributors at MetaFilter, where his work was introduced as "an operating system written by a schizophrenic programmer".

TempleOS

TempleOS is a biblical-themed operating system designed to be the Third Temple prophesized in the Bible. Known as J Operating System from 2004 to 2005, LoseThos from 2006 to 2012, and SparrowOS in late 2012, TempleOS is similar to the Commodore 64, DESQview and other early DOS-based interfaces. It was written in a programming language developed by Davis called HolyC, which was a middle ground between C and C++. Described as being more flexible than C, 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 ultimately had over 100,000 lines of code.

In 2005, Davis stated that his ambition for the J Operating System was to recapture the rapidly changing environment of the Commodore 64 era, as well as encouraging the creation of "odd-ball software." He envisioned the system as a Commodore 64 with a "thousand times" more powerful processing speed. In 2008, he wrote that LoseThos was primarily intended to create video games, and that it has no Internet functionality, claiming that doing so would be the same as reinventing the wheel.

Davis later proclaimed that he was in direct communication with God, who 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. As an example:

According to Davis, many of the system's features, such as its 640×480 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, but that no one had installed it. Later that year, he renamed the operating system to "SparrowOS", then to "TempleOS" the following year. A few weeks later, his website announced: "God's temple is finished. Now, God kills CIA until it spreads".

Recognition, controversy and following

Once TempleOS was completed, most of Davis' time was spent online, "coding, web surfing, or using the output from the National Institute of Standards and Technology randomness beacon to talk to God", and he drew fans following his various online activities. He posted video blogs and would refer to himself as "the smartest programmer that's ever lived" while showing his creations. His YouTube channels were repeatedly terminated due to his vulgarities. In 2017, the OS was shown as a part of an outsider art exhibition in Bourogne, France. Davis said he was happy to receive the attention but was disappointed that few of his fans had used the OS to speak to God.

Davis would frequently communicate in randomly generated blocks of text and off-topic declarations about God, which led to bans from websites including Something Awful, Reddit, and Hacker News. However, the critical reception to TempleOS was mostly favorable, as tech journalist David Cassel wrote, "programming websites tried to find the necessary patience and understanding to accommodate Davis". TechRepublic and OSNews published positive articles on Davis' work, even though he had been banned from OSNews for hostile comments targeting its readers and staff.

In September 2018, OSNews editor Thom Holwerda wrote: "Davis was clearly a gifted programmer – writing an entire operating system is no small feat – and it was sad to see him affected by his mental illness". One fan described him as a "programming legend", while another, a computer engineer, compared the development of TempleOS to a one-man-built skyscraper. The engineer had previously spoken to Davis at length and believed that Davis, had it not been for his illness, could have been a "Steve Jobs" or a "Steve Wozniak". He added that it "actually boggles my mind that one man wrote all that" and surmised that it may be difficult for a layperson to understand how extraordinary it was to write an entire operating system alone.

"Glowies"

Throughout his life, Davis believed that he was under constant persecution from federal agents, particularly those from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was controversial for his regular use of offensive slurs, including racist and homophobic epithets, and sometimes rebuked his critics as "CIA niggers". In one widely circulated YouTube video, he claimed that "the CIA niggers glow in the dark; you can see them if you're driving. You just run them over." Davis would also coin the term "glowie", which is based on the aforementioned phrase, and would later be used by far-right online groups to denote an undercover federal agent or informant.

Such outbursts, along with the operating system's "amateurish" presentation, ultimately caused TempleOS to become a frequent object of derision. Davis explained that his use of the word "nigger" was a reaction to being subject to psychological warfare tactics from media agencies such as the BBC. He addressed concerns about his language on his website:

Death

During his final two months, Davis struggled with periods of homelessness and incarceration. He stopped taking medication because he believed that it limited his creativity. Some fans helped him by bringing him supplies, but he refused their housing offers. After living with his sister in Arizona, Davis traveled to California, and in April 2018, he stopped in Portland, Oregon. Local police were informed that Davis may be a threat, since he had stated a willingness to kill if asked by God. In June, Portland police informed officials in the city of The Dalles, approximately  away, that they had received word that Davis might be headed there. No further complaints were received about Davis.

In his final video, recorded on a bench at The Dalles Wasco County Library, and uploaded hours before his death, he explained that he had removed most of his videos because he did not wish to "litter" the Internet, and that he had learned how to "purify" himself. At the very end, he states: "It's good to be king. Wait, maybe. I think maybe I'm just like a little bizarre little person who walks back and forth. Whatever, you know, but..."

On the evening of August 11, 2018, while walking alongside railroad tracks in The Dalles, Davis was struck and killed by a Union Pacific train. Investigators could not determine whether his death was suicide or accidental, although the train engineer believed his death to be a suicide. The police report stated that Davis was walking with his back toward the train and that he turned around before the moment of impact. When The Dalles Chronicle ran a story about an unnamed homeless man who was struck by a train, the newspaper was inundated with phone calls inquiring whether it was Davis, which the paper later confirmed in a follow-up piece.

Tributes
As reports of his death surfaced online, he was memorialized by fans in a number of tributes posted to social media. Through the TempleOS website, his family asked people to donate to "organizations working to ease the pain and suffering caused by mental illness". In December 2018, Linux.org, an unofficial community for Linux users, was vandalized by a hacker with a reference to his death. In November 2019, Davis was the subject of a 30-minute documentary on BBC Radio 4.

See also

 Creativity and mental health
 Religious delusion

References

External links

 
 TempleOS Website
  Archive of the TempleOS website and operating system
 
 

1969 births
2018 deaths
American Christians
American computer programmers
American male bloggers
Arizona State University alumni
Converts to Christianity from atheism or agnosticism
American homeless people
American outsider artists
American critics of atheism
People with schizophrenia
People from West Allis, Wisconsin
Railway accident deaths in the United States
American video bloggers
Illeists