Today the New York Times ran two articles, plus a video, about efforts around the world to use robots as teaching machines, er, teachers. Somehow, this all rings a bell.
Be sure to watch the video, entitled "Robotic Teaching" in the first one:
Is nothing sacred? Apparently not, when it comes to names of people, places, and things from the PLATO era. Last year was the year that "Avatar" was wrenched from the clutches of PLATO gaming legend to become the biggest movie in history. And now, I find that not even Bruce Parrello's famous screen name, Red Sweater, is safe. No, there's a software company with that name:
I contacted the folks at Red Sweater, and they say they've never heard of PLATO let alone poor Mr. Parrello. And so it goes, another PLATO name gobbled up by the present day...
One mystery I've never been able to solve is: who went, in May 1974, to the Little Theatre in Sullivan, Illinois, where Leonard Nimoy -- Spock himself -- was starring in a regional stage performance of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? I ask, because whoever it was who went down there, apparently went backstage, met Nimoy, and invited him up to the University of Illinois for a visit. And, what do you know, Nimoy agreed. And next thing you know, he is touring CERL.
Were you the person who invited Nimoy? Or, were you there the day he visited CERL? If I've not already interviewed you about this, please get in touch. I'd really like to get this story straight. Thanks!
Donald Bitzer was invited on The Phil Donahue Show twice to demonstrate PLATO. The first time was around 1978. I have a copy of that video. But I am still looking for a copy of the 1981 second show, for which I believe he was sole guest, and had the entire hour to demo PLATO. (The first show he had to share with an annoying fake robot named AROK that trivialized much of the rest of the show.)
If anyone has a VHS, Beta, DVD, or other recording of the second Donahue show, please let me know (email brian at platohistory dot org). Thanks!
The PLATO: A Culture of Innovation panel from the PLATO@50 conference, June 3, 2010. Featuring Don Bitzer, David Frankel, Tina Gunsalus, and Bob Price. Moderated by Bob Sutton. About 80 minutes long.
The Software Panel at the PLATO@50 conference featured Dr. Bob Rader, Dr. Bruce Sherwood, Mike Walker, and moderator Steve Gillmor. It's about 68 minutes long.
The PLATO@50 conference panel on Hardware Innovations featured Dr. Donald Bitzer, Dr. Roger Johnson, and Dr. Larry Weber. The Moderator was Philip McKinney. It's about 86 minutes long.
The Games Panel at the PLATO@50 conference featured John Markoff (Moderator), Bruce Artwick, John Daleske, Dr. Brand Fortner, Dr. Andrew Shapira, and Rich Hilleman. It's about 71 minutes long -- enjoy!
The Computer History Museum has uploaded another video from the PLATO@50 conference, late this afternoon -- the panel on Online Community. Featured are Charlene Li (Moderator), Dave Woolley, and Kim Mast, and Lili Cheng of Microsoft.
The Computer History Museum uploaded another high-definition video of a PLATO@50 panel session to YouTube today. This is the 1hr 9min video of the Online Education panel from June 3rd. It features an introduction by CHM CEO John Hollar, and a panel including Dr. Ruth Chabay, Dr. Sharon Dugdale, Bonnie Anderson Seiler, and Dr. Bruce Sherwood. The Moderator is Dr. Roy D. Pea:
You know that pile of computer tapes you have in the basement, or was it the attic? You know, the ones in those dusty old boxes that you stuffed away twenty or thirty or maybe even thirty-five years ago? The ones that contain backups of everything on the PLATO mainframe you worked on? Yeah, those tapes.
Could I borrow them?
I'm getting a lot of requests for tapes lately. I stopped asking for 'em long ago, but I guess the conference triggered interest in backup tapes again. If there's one thing I've learned over the years -- someone somewhere has tapes. Someone somewhere always has the pile of stuff you're looking for, be it tapes, brochures, articles, Kodachrome color slides, snapshots, movies, videos. It's out there somewhere.
I recently had dinner with some of the Cyber1.org folks and they were very interested in tapes too. They'd like to restore stuff on those tapes and get the lessons, notesfiles, whatever, onto cyber1.org. I'd love to see that too.
Stumbled on this oldie from the early 1970s. Written by Mike Carroll ("Hob"), Mike Folk ("Starry"), and Tom Stieglitz ("Condor"):
Twas the week before finals,
And on every term
The gamers were playing, making everyone squirm
The Cyber was clicking, the disks were a-spin
And the people in moonwar were trying to win
S-3's on remotes were blinking and flashing
(Every 5 minutes the system was crashing)
A new version here, and a new version there
Was enough to make even John Eisenberg swear
The Baron was BLEEPING at the raunched Comptech2
And Fuller was missing his space: fr2
Pad was in shambles, thanks to aero of glass
And everyone's heading for talko, en masse.
Poor John Daleske (as empire dies)
Is tearing his hair: tears in his eyes.
Meanwhile Pete Rowell and his friend Al McNeil
Are busily trying to make Nova look real
With cookies we authors, try Frankel to please
And Rick Blomme's beard is down to his knees.
He's being attacked, he's getting quite mad
But he's still the best friend the games ever had.
Then what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a sorrowful Sweater and a can of ROOT BEER.
"I'm hooked on my Fanta, I've given up hope...
The withdrawal is bad, like being on dope."
The author of pad, gandy, et al.
Will hopefully be back on the system next fall
(PLUG PLUG PLUG PLUG)
For those that we've missed (we know quite a few)
Check back in a month, when we write version 2.
Hob, Condor, Starry: We all need a rest.
We know this is poor, but we did do our best.
The technology website Punto Informatico has a writeup about PLATO's 50th anniversary. It's in italian. Here's a link to a rather bumpy machine translation to English via Google Translate.
For those unable to attend the conference, I thought you might be interested in this. One of the things we put together for attendees was a 24-page illustrated booklet summarizing the history and significance of PLATO.
The Computer History Museum has a relationship with the MagCloud service which lets anyone print their own magazines, and they've begun a series of computer history booklets at the MagCloud site. The PLATO@50 booklet is the second in this new series.
Click on either the above or below image to go to the MagCloud page to get details on the booklet and to find out how you can get a copy.
The booklet has a nice foreword by Donald Bitzer, has lots of great photos and PLATO screen shots in all their glorious orange pixels, and text written by yours truly. CHM did a really nice job on the design and layout too. Enjoy it!
One technical note: I was particularly pleased at how well some of the PLATO screen shots came out. I often hear print people and layout folks shudder at the notion of rendering 72-dots-per-inch screen grabs direct into print, as they usually want 150-dpi or even 300-dpi for print use, and 72-dpi seems to set PhotoShop gurus right off. But happily, the plain ol' 72-dpi TIFF screen grabs came out fine. Whatever magic they did to get them in the booklet worked.
The Computer History Museum had posted the first video of the entire evening of June 2, including introductory remarks by CHM CEO John Hollar, a 15-minute PLATO historical overview by yours truly, and then the conversation with Donald Bitzer, Ray Ozzie, and John Markoff. It's about 90 minutes total. Here it is:
The Reunion event starting around noon today was wonderful. A real surprise was the "PLATO @ 50" cake, which Don and Maryann Bitzer ceremoniously cut the first piece from.
Great to see so many folks, many for the first time.
Back now to frantic last-minute preparation for the conference program which kicks off tonight at 7pm sharp. See you there!
Since last November if not before then, I've been contacting people at Google regarding the idea of doing something like the following to celebrate the 50th anniversary of PLATO:
Would be hugely attention-grabbing, tens if not hundreds of millions would see it, and think of the good karma for Google to recognize the huge set of innovations that came decades before Larry and Sergey founded the company.
Month after month of trying different approaches to reach out to Google with the idea resulted in silence. Some Googlers suggested I write directly to Marissa Mayer, which I did last week. Heard back from her late last night (for many months I'd proposed that Google do the Doodle this week, not next, since it'd help boost awareness of next week's free conference at the Computer History Museum). She indicated this was the first she'd heard of it, but assumed it was now too late. So this morning I replied back to her and others at Google that, no, it's not too late at all -- any day between now and June 3 would be fine. No reply yet. Crossing fingers.
Google, if you're reading this, go for it. It would be completely awesome and in the long run you will see the wisdom in having acknowledged the PLATO team's work and rightful place in the pantheon of computer wizards that preceded Google and all the web companies in Silicon Valley.
In 1973, the year social computing began on PLATO, the PLATO system got the perfect storm of apps that would forever change the use of the system: PLATO Notes (message forums), Talk-o-matic (chat rooms), and TERM-talk (instant messaging).
What were some of today's tech luminaries doing in 1973? Let's have a look:
Claim to Fame
Name
Age in 1973
What They Were Doing
Apple
Steve Jobs
18
Dropped out of freshman year at Reed College in Oregon; stuck around for a while auditing classes in calligraphy. Later returns to Silicon Valley, winds up working at Atari.
Apple
Steve Wozniak
22
Joined Hewlett-Packard; began "Dial-a-Joke" hotline out of his home.
Twitter
Evan Williams
1
In diapers, on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska.
Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg
--
Would not be born for another 11 years.
Amazon
Jeff Bezos
9
Attending River Oaks Elementary School in Houston, TX.
DELL
Michael Dell
8
Attending Herod Elementary School in Houston, TX.
AOL
Steve Case
15
Student at Punahou School in Honolulu, HI.
Google
Larry Page
Infant
In diapers, being raised in East Lansing, MI.
Google
Sergey Brin
Infant
In diapers, being raised in Moscow, USSR.
Google
Eric Schmidt
18
Attending Princeton University.
Google
Marissa Mayer
---
Wouldn't be born for another two years.
Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales
7
Attending tiny one-room schoolhouse in Huntsville, AL.
The Web
Tim Berners-Lee
18
Graduated from Emanuel School and entered Oxford University.
Oracle
Larry Ellison
29
Working at Amdahl Corporation.
Netscape
Mark Andreessen
2
Two year old in Cedar Falls, IA; family would move to New Lisbon, WI.
craigslist
Craig Newmark
21
Student at Case Western Reserve University
eBay
Pierre Omidyar
6
Moved from native Paris, France to Potomac, MD; attended Potomac School.
eBay
Meg Whitman
17
Attending Cold Spring Harbor High School, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
Yahoo
Jerry Yang
5
Bouncy five-year-old growing up in Taipei, Taiwan.
Yahoo
David Filo
7
Attending school in Lake Charles, LA
YouTube
Chad Hurley
---
Would not be born for another three years.
YouTube
Steve Chen
---
Would not be born for another five years.
FourSquare
Dennis Crowley
---
Would not be born for another fourteen years.
LinkedIn
Reid Hoffman
6
Six-year-old kid growing up in Berkeley, CA.
Linux
Linus Torvalds
3
Toddler growing up in Helsinki, Finland.
Digg
Kevin Rose
---
Would not be born for another four years.
ChatRoulette
Andrey Ternovskiy
---
Would not be born for another twenty years.
Microsoft
Bill Gates
18
Graduated from Lakeside High School in Seattle, WA; worked as congressional page at the U.S. House of Representatives; enrolled in Harvard University in the fall.
Microsoft
Steve Ballmer
17
Graduated from Detroit Country Day School in Beverly Hills, MI; enrolled in Harvard University.
Lotus Notes, Groove, Microsoft
Ray Ozzie
18
Graduated from Maine South High School in Park Ridge, IL; enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Started using PLATO the following year.
At the conference next week, Ray Ozzie will be on hand among many other PLATO folks to share their insights and experiences. Two other notable speakers are Dave Woolley, who wrote PLATO Notes when he was 17, and Kim Mast, who wrote Personal Notes (PLATO's email system) in early 1974 when he was 18. Doug Brown, author of Talk-o-matic, will be attending the conference. Among the panel sessions is one devoted to the topic of the emergence of online community -- and essentially the birth of social media -- on PLATO in 1973-74. Not to miss.
Computer History Museum to Host "PLATO@50" Conference Two-Day Free Conference Commemorates PLATO's Amazing Legacy and Wide Influence; Features PLATO Creator and Plasma Display Co-Inventor Don Bitzer; Microsoft's Ray Ozzie; Brian Dear of PLATO History Foundation
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(May 20, 2010) - The Computer History Museum (CHM) announced today that it will host the PLATO@50 Conference June 2-3, 2010, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of PLATO, a large-scale computer system for which numerous popular technologies were invented, including gas-plasma flat-panel displays and interactive touch screens, as well as many software innovations. A co-production of the PLATO History Foundation (PHF) and CHM, the event will assemble in one place many of the key people involved with the creation of PLATO, for the first-ever public conference celebrating its history and accomplishments.
PLATO's list of innovations and seminal influences is considerable. Stemming from the University of Illinois in the 1960s and later marketed by Control Data Corporation, PLATO stands for "Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations." Designed as a large-scale system to teach students nationwide, with more than 10,000 hours of courseware in subjects ranging from elementary math to air traffic control, the federally-funded system quickly became much more -- a virtual microcosm of today's online world, with a thriving online community predating today's social media by decades.
"PLATO@50 is another example of the Museum doing something only we would undertake -- celebrating and paying tribute to a groundbreaking system whose innovations live on today," says John Hollar, President & Chief Executive Officer, CHM. "It's one of the great, unsung stories in computing over the last half century, and we're proud to stage this event on site and online."
The PLATO@50 conference features a significant lineup of speakers, including Donald Bitzer, creator of PLATO and co-inventor of the flat-panel gas plasma display; Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect of Microsoft (and a systems programmer on PLATO in the 1970's at the University of Illinois); Brian Dear, founder of the PLATO History Foundation and author of the upcoming book on PLATO, The Friendly Orange Glow; Phil McKinney, Vice President and CTO of HP's Personal Systems Group; moderators Steve Gillmor of "Gillmor Gang," Charlene Li of Altimeter Group, and many others.
"Those of us who were fortunate enough to have been early users of the PLATO system got a sneak peak at what one day the internet would become," said Ozzie. "Don Bitzer believed that computers could have a far broader impact than just simply computing; that in fact they could transform how we learn. But beyond education, the unbounded creativity of its emergent online community caused PLATO's impact to be far broader than any of us could have ever imagined."
"A convincing case can be made that PLATO was the birthplace of social computing," said Dear. "The list of parallels is long and impressive: multi-user chat rooms, instant messaging, the first online newspaper, group message forums, email, a thriving developer community, and addictive multi-player games."
On Wednesday, June 2 at 7 p.m., CHM Presents "PLATO@50- Seeing the Future Through the Past." The evening program will begin with a PLATO overview presented by Dear. Then John Markoff of The New York Times will moderate a panel featuring Bitzer and Ozzie.
Daytime panels on Thursday, June 3 will discuss the culture of innovation fostered by Bitzer, PLATO hardware and software, online education, online multiplayer games, and PLATO's online community. For more information and event descriptions, visit
http://computerhistory.org/events/listing/plato-at-50/.
Support for PLATO@50
Major funding for PLATO@50 is provided by Microsoft Corporation. The Conference Sponsor is PLATO Learning, Inc.
About the PLATO History Foundation
Founded by Brian Dear, who worked on PLATO systems at the University of Delaware, University of Maryland, and Control Data Corporation, the PLATO History Foundation's focus is to advance the public awareness of the history, significance, and importance of the PLATO computer system and its online community, and to tell the story of the people who designed, built, and used the system. The PLATO@50 conference is one outcome of this effort. For more information, visit http://platohistory.org and follow @platohistory on Twitter. Information about Dear's upcoming book on the history of PLATO can be found at http://friendlyorangeglow.com.
Computer History Museum Events
All events are free of charge and will be held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. To register, visit http://computerhistory.org/events. For more event information and updates from the Computer History Museum, become a fan on Facebook and follow @computerhistory on Twitter.
About the Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, Calif. is a nonprofit organization with a four-decade history. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history, and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs and moving images.
CHM brings computer history to life through an acclaimed speaker series, dynamic website, onsite tours, as well as physical and online exhibits. Current exhibits include, Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, Mastering the Game: A History of Computer Chess, and Innovation in the Valley -- A Look at Silicon Valley Startups. The online exhibit, featuring the Timeline of Computer History and over 600 key objects from Visible Storage, is found at: www.computerhistory.org.
Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing will open physically and online in January 2011. It will include the first permanent exhibit chronicling the origins of the Web and the Internet.
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the orange pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
Thanks to Aaron Woolfson's dedication, incredible effort, and dogged determination, attendees of the free PLATO @ 50 conference on June 2-3 will have hands-on access to fully-restored and operational PLATO terminals. They just arrived yesterday!
One neat little detail about these terminals is they all have one little enhancement that didn't exist when they were originally manufactured: Aaron has added an Ethernet port to each. So they can simply be plugged into the Internet and connect to Cyber1.org and you instantly see "Press NEXT to begin" on the screen. Amazing.
These terminals arrived at the Computer History Museum yesterday, artifact donations and hopefully in time part of its permanent exhibit. For me, the arrival of these terminals marks a huge milestone for the Museum, as I've been gently pushing the Museum for years to embrace the significance and historical importance of PLATO and one major way I've always hoped that would come about was for the Museum to accept PLATO artifacts into their collection. And we've reached that day. (I love the fact that these terminals are in crates that say "Property of The Computer History Museum".) Another massive milestone of course is the conference itself: it's just enormously exciting that the Museum has further embraced PLATO by supporting and co-producing the upcoming two-day conference. Hope to see you at the conference!
It's a never-ending job, contacting journalists who publish articles having to do with the origins of online communities, social media, multiplayer games, et cetera, but somebody's gotta do it.
The biggest howler was a quote from Larry Brilliant: "It was clearly the first social network." Larry, let me say that as a WELL user myself since 1986 and a PLATO user since 1979, I must tell you that you're dead wrong. On multiple levels, if we want to get really technical about it. And it's a shame Don didn't catch the error(s) and set the proper context for readers. Instead readers are left with a continuation of the myths about all things Internet post- and pre-.
Have no fear, I've contacted Mr. Clark. Gave him some background, invited him to the PLATO @ 50 Conference. Hope to hear from him soon.
I'll be posting this in a fancier place within the PLATO @ 50 conference page in the next day or so, but in the meantime I wanted to get this information out as many are clamoring for it.
I have booked a block of rooms at the Hotel Zico in Mountain View, a few miles and a short drive from the Computer History Museum, for the week of May 31st. To take advantage of these discounts, be sure to book soon! The rooms will prolly go pretty fast.
If you would like to book a room at this hotel and take advantage of what are pretty good rates considering how expensive Silicon Valley hotels and motels are, follow these steps:
Step 2. In the right-hand column of the home page, note the "rate finder" sidebar. Specify your "Check in" and "Check out" dates, the number of adults, number of children, and click "Go".
Step 3. This will take you to a new page where you will see a form and in the form will be a blank labelled "Corporate/Promotion Code". Enter the word "plato" in the space provided. This gets you the discount. Then click the "Check Availability" button.
Step 4. You're taken to the next step in their registration process, where you can select the type of room you want. You should see a list that has the header "50th Anniv PLATO computer system" and underneath that, choices for "Standard King Room" or "Standard Queen-Queen Room" with "Continue" buttons. Make your choice by clicking the "Continue" button you desire.
Step 5. Fill out all the name, address, and credit card info and then click the "Review Reservation" button at the bottom of the form.
Step 6. Review and confirm the reservation and you should be good to go.
If you have questions or would rather just call the hotel and make the reservation over the phone, call Hotel Zico at 866-920-8790.
Please help support this important project to document and archive the history of the PLATO computer system and its online community. Your support is appreciated!
