Recently in General Category

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:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/science/11robotside.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/science/11robots.html

What's your take on this? I'm deeply conflicted.

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...

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 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.

Enjoy!

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.

Got tapes? Lemme know. Thanks.

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:

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.

Related:

"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.

Today's articles come from Don Clark, a Wall Street Journal reporter, who wrote a story about The WELL's twenty-fith anniversary ("Long Before Facebook, There Was The WELL") and a corresponding blog post ("Real Tales from a Virtual Place Called The WELL").

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.