[SIGCIS-Members] PLATO History

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

I recently came across mention of an interesting project on the history of
the Plato system. 

 

The historical importance of Plato is, I think, reasonably well understood
among expert historians of computing as a crucial contribution to the
development of large-scale timesharing, computer mediated communication,
online communities, and educational computing. We're also aware of the
direct line of influence on Lotus Notes from Plato. It does have a full
chapter in Chris McDonald's 2011 Princeton Ph.D. Thesis, and pops up in work
on the history of CDC and William Norris, but has not received a thorough
history or been featured in many overview histories of computer technology.

 

So I'm glad to learn that Brian Dear has taken up the challenge of
preserving and disseminating information on Plato. His main site is
http://platohistory.org/. There was a big event at the Computer History
Museum back in 2010, http://platohistory.org/conference/50th-anniversary/
and videos of the panel sessions are available online if you scroll way down
on his main page. So the project hadn't exactly been in stealth mode, but I
thought that if I hadn't known about it then you might not either.

 

Dear has apparently conducted lots of interviews and gathered masses of
material for a book in progress, http://friendlyorangeglow.com/. I'm looking
forward to the book, but also hope that he will be making sure that this
material is properly archived so that future researchers will be able to
tell their own stories about Plato.

 

Tom

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