[SIGCIS-Members] PLATO History

[McDonald, Christopher]

Tom,
Have you heard news on specific publication plans?

The book has been listed as upcoming since I first started researching PLATO in 2009.  I hope it does see the light of day soon. 

Best, 
Chris McDonald
________________________________________
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh [thaigh at computer.org]
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 3:18 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] PLATO History

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