"It's (relatively) easy to write a GUI that puts all the information in the machine "at your finger tips"." I don't think so. In most cases the relevant inform

"It's (relatively) easy to write a GUI that puts all the information in the machine "at your finger tips"." I don't think so. In most cases the relevant information doesn't even have a formal representation (ex: it's "hidden" in turing-complete code) at the application level so it's literally impossible to get at this information unless you rewrite that application. What you need is support from the OS that lets you write "semantics-preserving" programs easily.