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Where Were You When PLATO Was Born?
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.
Where were you when PLATO _WAS BORN_?
Then I read that PLATO was born 50 years ago.
Then I read that someone put together a list of what people were doing in 1973.
So, I'm to understand that 2010 - 1973 = 50.
While you can find out what it is without too much trouble, that doesn't detract from the fact that the summary would be vastly improved if it had included that information in the first place.
PLATO was where I learned to program. Where I learned how to write a couple of lines of TUTOR (back before they even had an FM to R) and then hit Shift-EDIT. That sent me through the "compilor" (their word, not mine) and straight into execution. As soon as I liked/didn't like what I saw, I hit Shift-EDIT again and I was back in the editor exactly where I had been.
This means that in 1973 I learned to work with an Edit-Compile-Execute-Edit cycle that was often measured in less than 10 seconds. It's a hell of a way to learn quickly.
You use IM? I was using Talkomatic in 1973. You use forums? Try Notes (and I don't mean Lotus), again in 1973. MMO Games? Dogfight (1973) or even Nova (1974) (I was the coauthor with Al McNeil). Touch panel? Been there, got the T-shirt (and I still have this bee stuck to my finger (that's a deep, deep PLATO old-timer's joke.))
Between PLATO in the early 70's, and Xerox in Palo Alto in the late 70's (where I was on the BravoX Project at ASD (think "Microsoft Word")), about 80%+ of the fundamental user interface and the foundations of networking (communications and social) were created. In some cases these functions not only haven't improved all that much, some of it is sliding back down hill.
That doesn't mean you need to kiss our ass or anything, but some people around here really need to understand that the world did not start when they were born. It makes me cringe to even hear me say it, but sometimes the arrogance of the young—many of whom cannot be bothered to read even the history of their own industry—really wears thin.