[HN Gopher] PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s s...
___________________________________________________________________
PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s shaped the
future
Author : mpweiher
Score : 144 points
Date : 2023-03-18 11:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| waltbosz wrote:
| My mom was a PLATO developer. She wrote computer based learning
| courses for it.
|
| What I remember about PLATO was the games. I think there was one
| where you could drop a flower pot on Mickey Mouse's head. Does
| that sound familiar to anyone?
| formvoltron wrote:
| Wow that's so cool!
|
| My Mom certainly was not a developer, but she was studying
| nursing at little Bay Du Noc college in the upper peninsula of
| Michigan and AMAZINGLY there was a computer lab there with
| those orange round plastic machines and it was completely empty
| save for one guy that gave me an account and allowed me to chat
| with someone in California via a dungeon game. I must have been
| about 11 or 12. Looking back I wish I'd spent more hours in
| that lab.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Did she write it in Esperanto? I have a vague memory of cartoon
| characters doing things you typed in. But the developers
| thought Esperanto was easier to parse, so they made humans
| learn it to talk to the computer. Jen kial mi lernis
| esperanton.
| waltbosz wrote:
| I was maybe 6 years old at the time. I don't recall what she
| coded in.
| djmips wrote:
| I feel directly connected to Plato via Silas Warner's Robot War
| which was very influential for me. It was light years ahead of
| other micro software at the time and I'm convinced that the Plato
| cocoon was a major source of ideas and experience for the young
| Warner.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This again. Ted Gioia also mentioned it this week. They did have
| some nice technology.
|
| I was there then. My total interaction with PLATO was once, as an
| experimental subject for a Psych class. A friend of mine had
| _one_ class that used it. The consensus of the internet-history
| mailing list is that they were not very influential.
|
| They didn't "shape the future" because they kept to themselves,
| in their own building. We never saw them in the Digital Computer
| Lab. CDC completely missed the distributed computing revolution.
| com wrote:
| You're missing the terminals in an academic music library in
| Perth, Western Australia, and terminals in a local jail there
| too. Term-talk, and the games, and p-notes were
| transformational for some of us, who later went on in tech
| roles.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I used plato and found it pretty meh.
|
| MECC on the other hand
| AlbertCory wrote:
| what was MECC?
| convolvatron wrote:
| Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium. They put ttys
| and later silent 700s in elementary schools and libraries
| connected by dialup to a CDC. they had a early mud called
| Milieu that I spent a lot of time on...and I wrote some
| basic and pascal programs. in fact I think I took a
| programming class at some kind of summer school at the
| community college that was hosted there too.
| convolvatron wrote:
| thinking about this now. its pretty clear to me that that
| early education in computing gave me this career. as a
| youth I never wanted to pursue it, but when it was
| computing or minimum wage for the 8th year in a row - I
| already had the tools I needed to start.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| MERITSS/MECC was a fun, funky time-share system. It used
| multiple peripherals to feed one central CPU (with not
| much memory). The access I used had an acoustic modem
| (using a dedicated line) and a Model-33 teleprinter with
| a ASCII paper tape reader/puncher for storage.
|
| On good days, the time-share part was transparent. But
| there were dozens of access points; on rare days when
| most of them were in use, you could press a key and wait
| 10 or more seconds to get the character echoed back to
| the printer.
|
| One day I got one hour of access to a plasma-screen
| PLATO, and it was amazing. Never again even saw another.
| joezydeco wrote:
| MECC also published software for the Apple ][, including
| the first version of Oregon Trail that kids played in
| schools.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| btw, in "The Big Bucks" I have a (fictional) grad student
| Matt Feingold at U Minn. I've never even been to
| Minneapolis, but I did at least verify that there _was_
| married student housing, and they were not in the initial
| group for CSNet.
|
| Matt sneak-installs ARCNet at the university, which I'm
| pretty sure never happened. There's also a fictional
| French professor "Dr. Caron" who talks about the (real)
| Minitel.
|
| The Minitel actually was pretty decent, and they had a
| revenue model vastly different from what we've ended up
| with (the cost just ends up on your phone bill, and the
| service providers pay the phone company). I'm not saying
| this would be better, but at least no ads!
| vipvipv wrote:
| I think there is SOME truth to this. I remember being there and
| thinking if this could go beyond their confines but it never
| tookoff!:)
| retrocryptid wrote:
| That's true except for the bit about Plato terminals in the
| library. In the school across town, in the high-school in
| Springfield, and in colleges in Dover, Tallahassee and Dallas.
|
| I mean sure. Except for those places, the only place you could
| find a multi-thousand dollar PLATO terminal was the old RF
| research building. And CDC headquarters and a one or two at
| Cray's lab.
| dalke wrote:
| I went to FSU in Tallahassee for my undergrad. The PLATO
| machines were used for computer-based training for lower-
| level math classes. The only reason I knew about them was
| because I worked in the Math Help Center right across the
| hall, with an overlapping student user base.
|
| I remember the orange screens. And remember a "squash the
| bug" game possible due to the press-sensitive screen. But
| while I remember the admin mentioning some of PLATO's broader
| capabilities, that wasn't part of the student culture or
| knowledge base.
|
| The local online community, for example, was based around the
| CONFER program running on the CDC Cyber, a machine accessible
| via several unlocked terminal rooms running dumb terminals.
|
| I then went to UIUC (Illinois) for graduate school, in the
| physics department. PLATO was _much_ more integrated into
| school life there. But this was also the time of Archie and
| Gopher, and of course the Mosaic web browser came out of UIUC
| shortly after I arrived. I only ever used PLATO as a T.A., to
| enter undergrad grades.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yeah, they _could_ have joined the Internet revolution, but
| Minneapolis was the center for CDC and Cray, and they just
| missed it. Maybe "snooted it" is the better term.
| dalke wrote:
| Gopher, out of Minneapolis, was "the Internet revolution"
| for a year or so.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) .
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Looking at the general mood people had towards computers in the
| 60s, it's clear computers and any computer technology seem to
| follow a three decade trend of speculation, readjustment and push
| back, then full adoption.
|
| First decade: philosophical fervor, extreme optimism and
| speculative wonder into how the future will change
|
| Second decade: Post-bust adjustment, pessimism, bias towards
| return to normalcy
|
| Third decade: Full integration, time before feels alien
|
| 1960s: computers are a world changing, mind opening key to an
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 1970s: computers are just another tool and overhyped, not a
| change to the status quo
|
| 1980s: computers are inseparable from almost every part of our
| day to day lives
|
| 1990s: The internet is a world changing, mind opening key to a
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 2000s: the internet is just another tool and overhyped, not a
| change to the status quo
|
| 2010s: the internet is inseparable from almost every part of our
| day to day lives
|
| 2000s: AI is a world changing, mind opening key to an
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 2010s: AI is just another tool and overhyped, not a change to the
| status quo
|
| 2020s: AI is inseparable from almost every part of our day to day
| lives
| edizms wrote:
| Interesting since cryptocurrencies are in their 2nd decade now.
| userbinator wrote:
| _1980s: computers are inseparable from almost every part of our
| day to day lives_
|
| As someone who lived through that period, I don't think so.
| That description would be more applicable to ~2010+.
| dmm10 wrote:
| Your comment does not reflect history in the U.S.A.. And
| judging from the GP "our day to day lives" is very much U.S.
| centric.
|
| Transportation: ""By 1981, all GM vehicles would be equipped
| with their new Computer Command Control System ("CCC")
| emission control system that featured an ECM (Electronic
| Control Module) that featured a Motorola 6802 based 8-bit
| microprocessor manufactured by Delco Electronics. ""
| https://www.chipsetc.com/computer-chips-inside-the-car.html
|
| Entertainment - video games:
|
| ""we saw the release of all-time classic games such as Pac-
| man (1980), Mario Bros (1983), The Legend of Zelda (1986),
| Final Fantasy (1987), Golden Axe (1988), etc.""
| https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-
| game-c...
|
| Financial - personal:
|
| ATMs were quite common if no ubiquitous by the mid 1980's ""
| "The origins of the cashless society: cash dispensers, direct
| to account payments and the development of on-line real-time
| networks, c. 1965-1985" "" https://web.archive.org/web/201407
| 14184815/http://www.ebhsoc...
|
| Business:
|
| VisiCalc came out in 1979, and spreadsheets were common in
| business offices in the U.S.A. through the 1980's.
|
| Entertainment - TV and movies:
|
| Computers were also used in commercial and movie production
| (ex. the 1984 Macintosh commercial, Pixar founded 1986 more
| or less out of Lucasfilm, and note that the VideoToaster came
| out for the Amiga in 1990 bringing professional level video
| production to a much more accessible price point.)
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Due to the telescoping nature of innovations it was likely a
| longer and more spaced out series of advances. Nevertheless
| in business computers were ubiquitous by the 1980s
| californiadreem wrote:
| If you've ever enjoyed the game Rogue or roguelikes, Macromedia
| Flash, or the famous Mahjong Solitaire (among countless other
| influences), PLATO's influences are at hand.
|
| You can also experience the wonders of PLATO through emulation:
| https://www.cyber1.org/
| ohjeez wrote:
| Plato Homelink was my first online community, circa 1984 (?),
| after a positive writeup in PC Magazine. It had a lot of positive
| tech features (graphics!). But mainly it was a warm and welcoming
| place, with friendly people who were really interested in
| learning from each other.
| theodpHN wrote:
| While U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan marveled in 2014
| that his kids could learn to code online using Khan Academy, a
| 1975 paper on Interactive Systems for Education notes that 650
| students were learning programming online using PLATO during the
| Spring '75 semester
| http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED102940.pdf
|
| Khan Academy (2013) v. PLATO (1973)
| https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7307/11141723746_d2b239bd18_o...
| pklausler wrote:
| I still remember the awesome multiplayer fighter jet combat
| game!
| williamDafoe wrote:
| Brand Fortner's Airfight - it inspired Sublogic Inc. who
| wrote Microsoft flight simulator 2023.
| brandfortner wrote:
| The first version of airtight was developed by myself and
| Kevin Gorey. I was the sole author of later versions.
| brianstorms wrote:
| yo, Brand! nice to see you here!!!
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| found these videos about the plato system
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmWcGhlXqA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THoxsBw-UmM
|
| also there is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)
|
| they mention that they were linked by a network, is it known what
| kind of transport protocol they were using on the CDC systems?
| theodpHN wrote:
| If you're looking for a longer PLATO read, check out Brian Dear's
| definitive book: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of
| the PLATO System https://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Orange-Glow-
| Untold-Cybercult...
| labrador wrote:
| I stumbled on this book in the Menlo Park public library and
| really enjoyed it. I also wondered why I had never heard of
| PLATO. Very good read.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| In the seventies "Computer lib / dream machines" by Ted
| Nelson covered all the hottest computer systems in North
| America and included among them small talk and Plato and the
| logo Lab at MIT and graphics at Utah and a few others.
|
| Xerox PARC researchers visited PLATO in 1972 and when they
| got back to Palo Alto they implemented just about everything
| they saw! App generator for pictures (SD Mode), paint
| (charset editor), bitmap /memory graphics display (plasma
| panel), multiple fonts and character sets, etc!
| rbanffy wrote:
| I felt it a bit confusing, going back and forth through time
| more than it'd be needed.
| felixgallo wrote:
| Friendly Orange Glow is unfortunately kind of overstuffed,
| meandering and political and focused excessively on bitzer, and
| misses so much of what PLATO/NovaNET were to so many people.
| Empire, avatar, oubliette, dnd, even moonwar, typomatic, Room
| B/C, night ops, pso, AIDS, TERM-test, cherry keyboard hoarding,
| stig bjorklund, the chem lab, the trs-80 running the satellite,
| lippold haken and the music room, bigfoot. I don't know if it's
| possible to write the PLATO story but FOG only skips across the
| surface.
| pliftkl wrote:
| I loved the avatar gameplay and the fact that it wasn't a
| "massively" multiplayer dungeon crawl, but rather something
| small enough that you knew most of the players. I'd trade a
| lot of the scale and graphics of modern gameplay for a return
| to the deliberate party based run of modestly updated avatar.
| felixgallo wrote:
| I sometimes think about bringing back avatar. I was one of
| the avatar ops, and came up with the idea of the afterlife,
| which was intended to improve its single player
| playability, but my version (navatar) was maybe a bit too
| sprawling and ambitious.
| brianstorms wrote:
| I'm the author of The Friendly Orange Glow. I agree the book
| skips across the surface.
|
| Some backstory: I originally proposed three volumes, each
| 1000 pages, to the publisher. They laughed and told me
| absolutely no. My thinking was, PLATO as a topic needs to be
| approached the way Robert Caro approached Lyndon Johnson.
| It's going to need multiple 1000-page books.
|
| The publisher's reaction to my proposal was laughter. Their
| deal was, one book, 150,000 words, take it or leave it. So I
| took it: I'd spent 30+ years working on the project, had
| accumulated some 7 million words of interview transcripts,
| and had to get it out. In the end I delivered 229,000 words
| to the publisher which even then was the result of painful
| and severe chopping out of not only major sections but even
| entire chapters--all kinds of history got removed from the
| manuscript. (By the way, the final book came out to 209,000
| words. Publisher was pissed that it wasn't 150,000. Editor,
| god bless him, stood by me, and we shipped 209,000 words.
| Publisher, I firmly believe, punished me by listing the book
| at a $40.00 list price, which is instant market death for a
| hardcover book in 2017. Powell's refused to let me do a book
| event because they don't allow $40 books to be presented by
| authors. It was sabotage, in my opinion. The publisher did
| atrocious, half-hearted work at publicity. They sent seven
| copies to people at the New York Times, which did nothing and
| never reviewed it. Nor did WPost. Nor did LA Times. Or SF
| Chronicle. Or Boston Globe, etc, etc. Only Wall Street
| Journal reviewed it, and they gave it a glowing review.
|
| But here's the thing... anyone who knew and used PLATO is
| going to have their pet topics and focus areas, and complain
| about topics the book did include that are not favorites to
| them personally. Trust me, I've heard from thousands of PLATO
| people and everybody's happy and unhappy at the same time
| with what is in, and what is not in, the book. But I didn't
| write the book for PLATO people. I wrote it for the 8 billion
| people on Earth who'd never heard of PLATO and who were
| likely to never hear of it and its significance if
| _something_ didn 't get published that triggered PLATO to
| finally enter the conversation.
|
| And look what's happening: Y Combinator's Hacker News is
| talking about PLATO! Ars of all things is talking about
| PLATO! In the past 5 years, Slate and WIRED (who always hated
| PLATO and refused to mention it) talked about PLATO. Verge
| and Motherboard covered it. PLATO is now a part of the
| conversation. Mission accomplished.
|
| Finally: If you want to get a copy and read The Friendly
| Orange Glow, you can buy a hardcover from me directly by
| going to the Amazon site's hardcover page for the book, and
| selecting a "New" copy from seller Birdrock Books. That's me.
| I'm selling new copies for $11.11. Brand new, out of the box
| from the publisher. They come from me, with my signature on
| it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've read all four volumes of Caro's LBJ biography and
| praying he doesn't die before finishing the final one.
|
| PLATO is not in that category, sorry. I was there (at
| UIUC). PLATO had an extremely small influence on the
| University, and especially on the Dept. of Computer
| Science. We never saw them at DCL.
|
| According to the internet-history mailing list (which has
| essentially all the pioneers who are still alive), they had
| negligible influence on the Internet.
|
| That's not to denigrate PLATO and what they did. It was the
| pinnacle of what you could do with a mainframe-and-
| terminals system. They could have had a much bigger
| influence on computers and society than they had.
| felixgallo wrote:
| It's weird how you keep forcefully insisting on PLATO's
| irrelevance in every thread that comes up.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Sorry you find HN participation "weird."
| felixgallo wrote:
| It is when it's every single thread. That's when it gets
| weird.
|
| As far as PLATO's impact on the world, I think it's
| underestimated and underappreciated. I don't give a shit
| about internet-history, I was one of the first few
| thousand people on the arpanet too. The actual authors of
| Mosaic were in CERL quite a bit. Usenet was already going
| on, but newsreaders (rn, trn, nn, etc.) were clearly
| influenced by the structure of notes and vice versa. dnd,
| oubliette and avatar were shamelessly ripped off multiple
| times and were the early foundation for graphical dungeon
| crawlers.
|
| The idea that PLATO somehow needed to impact the CS
| department is kind of risible. Like having terminals in
| DCL was important? What did DCL ever do? PLATO impacted
| basically every chem, ceram, mech-e, comp-e, edu, edu-
| tech, geo, physics, etc., student at UIUC, not to mention
| U Chicago and places like Honolulu and ETH, for more than
| a decade. Thousands of us who grew up learning TUTOR as
| /jpr/cerl accounts have ended up having pretty good
| computer careers, all because of PLATO.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "every single thread" : it's in the news the last few
| days. I'll continue to share what I know, and your idea
| of "weirdness" is your own hangup. We can take it up with
| dang if you think there's something wrong with it.
|
| "having terminals in DCL" : I wasn't aware PLATO invented
| terminals.
|
| "I don't give a shit about internet-history" : OK, that
| categorizes you.
|
| There were lots of ideas, and PLATO had some. I never
| used the word "irrelevant." However, they are _not_ the
| lost city of Atlantis or the panspermia idea that
| suddenly explains everything. They were there; they had
| some success; they could have had much more and thus
| wouldn 't need to be rediscovered now.
| brianstorms wrote:
| Who cares about the Internet. (I'm on internet-history...
| it's a bunch of aging farts, very distinguished and nice
| aging farts but still, talking about TCP/IP and who did
| email and who did this and when did that happen etc.
| That's all swell. My book was not about the Internet. It
| was about PLATO and from a larger perspective, the rise
| of cyberculture of which "internet" only a portion.)
|
| DCL like the Education dept at UIUC pooh-poohed PLATO
| from the outset. So it's no wonder they had a snooty
| attitude (and still do) about PLATO. MIT and Stanford had
| the same snooty attitue. PLATO was electrical
| engineering-driven, and science and humanities-driven.
| Very unusual for such a project, but that was the way it
| was.
|
| Also, my book wasn't about the impact PLATO had on the
| University, but on cyberculture. The University
| politicians gladly swept PLATO under the carpet as soon
| as they could as the NCSA got big money in the 80s, and
| then the web took off in the 90s. Today it's like PLATO
| never existed at UIUC. A lot of that is due to decisions
| the PLATO lab took to stick to clearly antiquated design
| decisions and a reluctance to embrace client/server and
| distributed-computing designs. But they had to stick to
| old ways, because they had an immediate need to deploy,
| they weren't an ivory tower think tank like Xerox PARC
| dreaming up what the future might look like in 20 years.
| PLATO folks were dreaming up the then-present, and they
| shipped, like any good startup.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| OK, you have to defend your book. You wouldn't be a
| conscientious author if you didn't.
|
| Your comments about internet-history, though, discredit
| you as a historian. The Internet is the biggest change
| computing has seen since the PC. PLATO was around the
| whole time and not participating.
|
| As for "the rise of cyberculture": you are way off base.
| There are multiple books about the Well, UseNet, Mosaic,
| Netscape, and others which cover that in complete detail.
| If we compare the reach and influence of those with
| PLATO... well, it's like comparing the Football World Cup
| to the US Division Three playoffs.
|
| The "snooty attitude" at DCL? Yeah, I don't remember
| anyone even talking about it, so maybe it _was_ there. On
| the other hand, how hard did PLATO try to gain
| acceptance?
|
| You do account for "clearly antiquated design decisions
| and a reluctance to embrace client/server and
| distributed-computing designs," so props for that.
| However, that's the test every mainframe- and mini-
| oriented company faced in the 80s and 90s, and most
| failed. PLATO did, too, so they're in good company.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without personal
| attacks.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| felixgallo wrote:
| 'discredit you as a historian'? You're one weird dude.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines like this,
| regardless of how annoying another comment is or you feel
| it is.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| gwern wrote:
| Why did you go the book route? It sounds like you spent a
| vast amount of effort to ship a book which fell radically
| short of your vision & available material, which made the
| most nugatory profit (and by any honest accounting was a
| big financial loss to you), and which didn't succeed at
| making a mark as a formal prestigious book. Wouldn't've it
| have worked a lot better to focus on a comprehensive
| website where you could put up all the material and solicit
| submissions?
| brianstorms wrote:
| What I wanted to do was a film documentary. What stopped
| me was, there was no footage! Meaning, nobody at CERL,
| the PLATO lab at U Illinois, had filmed everything.
| Nobody was a movie camera nerd. Nobody captured all the
| historical events, or even just day to day meetings /
| demos. It wasn't that kind of lab: everyone was insanely
| focused on the work at hand, and the culture was never
| one to expend any cycles on documenting how things went
| along the way. So there's a paper record, but very little
| in the way of footage. And if you do a documentary
| feature film you need TONS TONS TONS of video and film
| footage.
|
| I did consider a website but ugh, it limits the audience.
| It doesn't get into bookstores. It doesn't get on college
| syllabi. You gotta do a book. So I did a book.
|
| As for big financial loss, I knew going into the project
| I'd never make back what I put into the project over ~30
| years. I didn't care; that wasn't the goal. The goal was
| to capture the story while the criticial mass of key
| PLATO people were still alive, and then put that into
| print so the world would know about PLATO before it all
| disappeared--believe me, the Silicon Valley tech industry
| would be perfectly happy if PLATO had disappeared. It
| messes so much with their mythology, after all! So that
| was a big motivator. The book has done fairly well,
| actually, and continues to sell in hardcover, paperback,
| and audiobook editions.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Stig Bjorklund?!
| brianstorms wrote:
| Stig was a cool guy, RIP.
| disqard wrote:
| Also interesting: a write-up of the second-ever TED conference
| (in 1990!) by Brian Dear!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35216875
| wombatpm wrote:
| UIUC grad here. Used PLATO in 89 for a Physics E&M class. I had
| friends fail out due to Empire and Avatar guild reset.
|
| In the works of the quiz answer parser:
|
| no
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I was at UIUC in 1988. My first physics class used PLATO quite
| a lot and it was awesome. I loved going down to the computer
| lab in the basement of my dorm and using it.
| welcome_dragon wrote:
| Physics 333?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| One of my earliest memories of a computer was around 1979, when a
| kind teacher took me to see a PLATO terminal at my elementary
| school. I remember being shown I could play the game
| Concentration with another person _somewhere else in the world_ ,
| the magic of networking. It made a huge impression on me.
| colinflane wrote:
| I first learned of PLATO thru the writing of the CRPG Addict:
| http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-197...
| dang wrote:
| Related. Not much really. Others?
|
| _Irata.online: A PLATO service for retro computing enthusiasts_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32600338 - Aug 2022 (26
| comments)
|
| _The PLATO Project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782661 - Jan 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Irata.online a modern implementation of the PLATO computing
| system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207044 - Aug
| 2020 (1 comment)
|
| _John Hunter's World Peace Game, Roger Ebert, and the PLATO
| System_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460259 - June
| 2020 (9 comments)
|
| _PLATO, Graphics, Time-sharing in 1960s_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830810 - Dec 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _PLATO Notes released 40 years ago today_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186845 - Oct 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _A Look Back at the 1960s PLATO Computing System_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 - March 2018 (45
| comments)
|
| _When Star Trek's Spock Met PLATO_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019201 - Dec 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Internet That Wasn't: Review of "The Friendly Orange Glow"
| by Brian Dear_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 -
| Nov 2017 (24 comments)
|
| _The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747924 - Nov 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Greatest Computer Network You've Never Heard of (PLATO)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703024 - Nov 2017 (3
| comments)
|
| _Performing History on PLATO: A Response to a Recent SIGCIS
| Presentation_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542999 -
| Oct 2017 (1 comment)
|
| _Want to see gaming's past and future? Dive into the
| "educational" world of PLATO_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957552 - Nov 2016 (7
| comments)
|
| _Ars Technica on the history of PLATO games_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12827672 - Oct 2016 (1
| comment)
|
| _PLATO (computer system)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666430 - Nov 2013 (23
| comments)
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The Friendly Orange Glow (which a few of these reference) has
| easily the most information I've ever seen about PLATO in one
| place. (Perhaps more than you'd like, if you don't care for the
| university politics surrounding it - but hey, it's
| comprehensive.) For anyone who's at all interested in PLATO,
| I'd recommend giving it a read.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Second the recommendation. _Great_ book.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Ha! There were some PLATO terminals at the University of Western
| Australia through to the 1990s. I spent a couple of months in
| 1990 using PLATO to learn to touch-type. My speed dropped from
| 35wpm to 20wpm, until I built it up again to a peak of 95wpm a
| few years later, reached by spending hours on IRC typing in
| complete sentences.
| tpmx wrote:
| While very impressive, I don't really see any clear signs/pieces
| of evidence that this effort shaped the future, though.
| theodpHN wrote:
| Computer History Museum DON BITZER 2022 Fellow
| https://computerhistory.org/profile/don-bitzer/
|
| For pioneering online education and communities with PLATO and
| coinventing the plasma display
|
| When networks like the Internet were still a research lab
| curiosity, Don Bitzer's multiuser PLATO system served as a
| dress rehearsal for what we do on those networks today - learn,
| teach, collaborate, chat, mail, play games, argue, and more.
| PLATO's courseware language and touchscreen, multimedia
| terminals previewed features of decades hence. PLATO was a
| postcard from the future of online communities, and its example
| would help make that future real.
|
| Donald L. Bitzer was born January 1, 1934 and is an American
| electrical engineer and computer scientist. He is co-inventor
| of the flat-panel plasma display and the "father of PLATO," the
| world's earliest time-shared, computer-based education system
| and home to one of the world's most pioneering online
| communities.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| Xerox PARC stole everything they could from PLATO after their
| 1972 tour of PLATO and being PhDs never gave credit where
| credit was due! Picture language, app generator, multilingual
| fonts, a system so simple even a kid could learn to program it
| (I did at age 14, self taught), bitmap graphics, etc. When I
| went to work at Xerox Office Systems Division - the development
| arm of PARC - I would say that after 13 years of trying - with
| computers 10x faster - they were PARTIALLY caught up! Highly
| inferior communications tools, and no support for inter-
| terminal games . .
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