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Where Were You When PLATO Was Born?

Posted by kdawson on from the ask-socrates dept.

PLATO, cradle of so many firsts, was born 50 years ago. Next week the Computer History Museum is hosting a two-day conference to celebrate the anniversary. Microsoft's Ray Ozzie, who worked on PLATO as an undergraduate, will be one of the keynote speakers. Co-producer Brian Dear has put together a list of today's technology notables and what they were doing in 1973, the year that social computing suddenly blossomed on PLATO.

14 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. WTF? I was in Sudan, but who cares? by EWAdams · · Score: 3, Informative

    PLATO rocked, but to be honest it didn't have anything to do with me.

    Think of a better headline.

    --
    I piss off bigots.
  2. nowhere by meerling · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, but Plato was born and died a few thousand years before I was.

    (Yeah, I know, wrong Plato, but with that headline, you knew someone was going to say it.)

  3. So, What Is PLATO? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 3, Informative

    The links don't say what PLATO is, except "the greatest untold story in the history of computing". So, what the heck is it?

    1. Re:So, What Is PLATO? by hedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

      PLATO was the first ever computer based instruction course. Which I definitely wouldn't expect most people to know. The only reason why I know is that the community college my mother works at they use it.

    2. Re:So, What Is PLATO? by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Informative

      The availability of Google and Wikipedia doesn't excuse clumsy article summaries. If most of your audience doesn't know what X device is, taking a sentence to explain it makes it a much better article summary. I would say it is pretty fundamental to good writing. I would grant that Slashdot editors don't know much about good writing, but that's not a good excuse.

      Maybe PLATO was very important, but despite having actually read about computer technology history in the past, I don't remember ever having heard of it. That, and based on other comments to this story, I'd say that PLATO must have been pretty obscure.

    3. Re:So, What Is PLATO? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Informative

      In a nutshell: It was a preview of most of the features of the Internet (analogs of web 2.0, email, usenet, etc), except it was done on dumb terminals hooked to a central mainframe. Many PLATO systems were hosted on school campuses and used mainly for computer-based education.

      They somehow managed to support hundreds of simultaneous interactive user sessions hosted on a single CPU with horsepower comparable to that of an 80286. The graphics-capable terminals used a cool 500x500 plasma display that took advantage of the fact that a grid of plasma dots can act as a memory array, so no frame buffer was required.

    4. Re:So, What Is PLATO? by Trepidity · · Score: 2, Informative

      It was also one of the earliest persistent online communities (before the WELL, Usenet, and BBS eras).

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    5. Re:So, What Is PLATO? by MidnightBrewer · · Score: 2, Informative

      The post, and the links, fail to explain what PLATO is. If I have to go do research to figure out what exactly the subject matter is, then the article isn't ready to publish. Just to be a good sport, I'll actually post the pertinent Wikipedia link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

      Your welcome.

      --
      "Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
  4. Please explain... by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know it's news for nerds... but I've never heard of this PLATO (other than the philosopher), and it would be nice to explain what it is in the summary or in an editor's sentence at the start.

    Ryan Fenton

  5. Re:Um... by FunPika · · Score: 3, Informative

    No it was born in 1960....its just that nobody gave a damn about it until it was 13. Such a lonely childhood....

    --
    After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
  6. Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    They were older than that, they got their start as a project with Control Data. They were originally used for flight simulator software for the military and ran off of an early mainframe. From there the company grew to support other training software and has very slowly evolved over time. The company really does go back that far, they were around before Microsoft, Apple or even Unix, they are that old.

  7. Mod This -1, Pedantic by guyminuslife · · Score: 2, Informative

    Asking a question when you're looking for information is not the Socratic method. That's being a student, asking a teacher. The Socratic method involves the teacher asking the student a question in order to get the student to think about the problem.

    IMO, the AC, despite being rhetorical, is much closer to being Socratic than GGP.

    --
    I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
  8. Re:Um... by dpreformer · · Score: 3, Informative

    PLATO was born in 1960. By 1973 it had grown to the point that it enabled social networking of sorts - online games as well as its ostensible purpose for computer aided instruction.

    I remember PLATO terminals in the university library when I was first using computers - they were big amber plasma screens that did pretty good graphics for the time. Beat punched cards and green bar paper as far as user interface hands down. It was a lot nicer than the dumb terminals that were starting to be available for coding.

  9. Re:I Flunked Out of College Because of Plato by mombass · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was at U of Illinois 69-74, and one of the things I DO remember was working with PLATO. It was all very "futuristic" to do a course on a COMPUTER!! Not terribly easy, but fun in a geeky way. Times being what they were, I don't remember the course.