[HN Gopher] PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s s...
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PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s shaped the
future
Author : mpweiher
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-03-18 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| waltbosz wrote:
| My mom was a PLATO developer. She wrote computer based learning
| courses for it.
|
| What I remember about PLATO was the games. I think there was one
| where you could drop a flower pot on Mickey Mouse's head. Does
| that sound familiar to anyone?
| formvoltron wrote:
| Wow that's so cool!
|
| My Mom certainly was not a developer, but she was studying
| nursing at little Bay Du Noc college in the upper peninsula of
| Michigan and AMAZINGLY there was a computer lab there with
| those orange round plastic machines and it was completely empty
| save for one guy that gave me an account and allowed me to chat
| with someone in California via a dungeon game. I must have been
| about 11 or 12. Looking back I wish I'd spent more hours in
| that lab.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Did she write it in Esperanto? I have a vague memory of cartoon
| characters doing things you typed in. But the developers
| thought Esperanto was easier to parse, so they made humans
| learn it to talk to the computer. Jen kial mi lernis
| esperanton.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This again. Ted Gioia also mentioned it this week. They did have
| some nice technology.
|
| I was there then. My total interaction with PLATO was once, as an
| experimental subject for a Psych class. A friend of mine had
| _one_ class that used it. The consensus of the internet-history
| mailing list is that they were not very influential.
|
| They didn't "shape the future" because they kept to themselves,
| in their own building. We never saw them in the Digital Computer
| Lab. CDC completely missed the distributed computing revolution.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I used plato and found it pretty meh.
|
| MECC on the other hand
| vipvipv wrote:
| I think there is SOME truth to this. I remember being there and
| thinking if this could go beyond their confines but it never
| tookoff!:)
| retrocryptid wrote:
| That's true except for the bit about Plato terminals in the
| library. In the school across town, in the high-school in
| Springfield, and in colleges in Dover, Tallahassee and Dallas.
|
| I mean sure. Except for those places, the only place you could
| find a multi-thousand dollar PLATO terminal was the old RF
| research building. And CDC headquarters and a one or two at
| Cray's lab.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Looking at the general mood people had towards computers in the
| 60s, it's clear computers and any computer technology seem to
| follow a three decade trend of speculation, readjustment and push
| back, then full adoption.
|
| First decade: philosophical fervor, extreme optimism and
| speculative wonder into how the future will change
|
| Second decade: Post-bust adjustment, pessimism, bias towards
| return to normalcy
|
| Third decade: Full integration, time before feels alien
|
| 1960s: computers are a world changing, mind opening key to an
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 1970s: computers are just another tool and overhyped, not a
| change to the status quo
|
| 1980s: computers are inseparable from almost every part of our
| day to day lives
|
| 1990s: The internet is a world changing, mind opening key to a
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 2000s: the internet is just another tool and overhyped, not a
| change to the status quo
|
| 2010s: the internet is inseparable from almost every part of our
| day to day lives
|
| 2000s: AI is a world changing, mind opening key to an
| unimaginably bright future
|
| 2010s: AI is just another tool and overhyped, not a change to the
| status quo
|
| 2020s: AI is inseparable from almost every part of our day to day
| lives
| californiadreem wrote:
| If you've ever enjoyed the game Rogue or roguelikes, Macromedia
| Flash, or the famous Mahjong Solitaire (among countless other
| influences), PLATO's influences are at hand.
|
| You can also experience the wonders of PLATO through emulation:
| https://www.cyber1.org/
| ohjeez wrote:
| Plato Homelink was my first online community, circa 1984 (?),
| after a positive writeup in PC Magazine. It had a lot of positive
| tech features (graphics!). But mainly it was a warm and welcoming
| place, with friendly people who were really interested in
| learning from each other.
| theodpHN wrote:
| While U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan marveled in 2014
| that his kids could learn to code online using Khan Academy, a
| 1975 paper on Interactive Systems for Education notes that 650
| students were learning programming online using PLATO during the
| Spring '75 semester
| http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED102940.pdf
|
| Khan Academy (2013) v. PLATO (1973)
| https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7307/11141723746_d2b239bd18_o...
| theodpHN wrote:
| If you're looking for a longer PLATO read, check out Brian Dear's
| definitive book: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of
| the PLATO System https://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Orange-Glow-
| Untold-Cybercult...
| labrador wrote:
| I stumbled on this book in the Menlo Park public library and
| really enjoyed it. I also wondered why I had never heard of
| PLATO. Very good read.
| felixgallo wrote:
| Friendly Orange Glow is unfortunately kind of overstuffed,
| meandering and political and focused excessively on bitzer, and
| misses so much of what PLATO/NovaNET were to so many people.
| Empire, avatar, oubliette, dnd, even moonwar, typomatic, Room
| B/C, night ops, pso, AIDS, TERM-test, cherry keyboard hoarding,
| stig bjorklund, the chem lab, the trs-80 running the satellite,
| lippold haken and the music room, bigfoot. I don't know if it's
| possible to write the PLATO story but FOG only skips across the
| surface.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| One of my earliest memories of a computer was around 1979, when a
| kind teacher took me to see a PLATO terminal at my elementary
| school. I remember being shown I could play the game
| Concentration with another person _somewhere else in the world_ ,
| the magic of networking. It made a huge impression on me.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Not much really. Others?
|
| _Irata.online: A PLATO service for retro computing enthusiasts_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32600338 - Aug 2022 (26
| comments)
|
| _The PLATO Project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782661 - Jan 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Irata.online a modern implementation of the PLATO computing
| system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207044 - Aug
| 2020 (1 comment)
|
| _John Hunter's World Peace Game, Roger Ebert, and the PLATO
| System_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460259 - June
| 2020 (9 comments)
|
| _PLATO, Graphics, Time-sharing in 1960s_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830810 - Dec 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _PLATO Notes released 40 years ago today_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186845 - Oct 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _A Look Back at the 1960s PLATO Computing System_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 - March 2018 (45
| comments)
|
| _When Star Trek's Spock Met PLATO_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019201 - Dec 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Internet That Wasn't: Review of "The Friendly Orange Glow"
| by Brian Dear_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 -
| Nov 2017 (24 comments)
|
| _The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747924 - Nov 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Greatest Computer Network You've Never Heard of (PLATO)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703024 - Nov 2017 (3
| comments)
|
| _Performing History on PLATO: A Response to a Recent SIGCIS
| Presentation_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542999 -
| Oct 2017 (1 comment)
|
| _Want to see gaming's past and future? Dive into the
| "educational" world of PLATO_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957552 - Nov 2016 (7
| comments)
|
| _Ars Technica on the history of PLATO games_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12827672 - Oct 2016 (1
| comment)
|
| _PLATO (computer system)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666430 - Nov 2013 (23
| comments)
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The Friendly Orange Glow (which a few of these reference) has
| easily the most information I've ever seen about PLATO in one
| place. (Perhaps more than you'd like, if you don't care for the
| university politics surrounding it - but hey, it's
| comprehensive.) For anyone who's at all interested in PLATO,
| I'd recommend giving it a read.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Second the recommendation. _Great_ book.
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