The Friendly Orange Glow - SFBA Book Club

640 pages

English language

Published Dec. 29, 2017

ISBN:: 978-1-101-87155-3
Goodreads:: 34373814

(1 review)

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Not only did PLATO engineers make significant hardware breakthroughs with plasma displays and touch screens but PLATO programmers also came up with a long list of software innovations: chat rooms, instant messaging, message boards, screen savers, multiplayer games, online newspapers, interactive fiction, and emoticons. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online …

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Not only did PLATO engineers make significant hardware breakthroughs with plasma displays and touch screens but PLATO programmers also came up with a long list of software innovations: chat rooms, instant messaging, message boards, screen savers, multiplayer games, online newspapers, interactive fiction, and emoticons. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online community that was to follow in its footsteps.

The Friendly Orange Glow is the first history to recount in fascinating detail the remarkable accomplishments and inspiring personal stories of the PLATO community. The addictive nature of PLATO both ruined many a college career and launched pathbreaking multimillion-dollar software products. Its development, impact, and eventual disappearance provides an instructive case study of technological innovation and disruption, project management, and missed opportunities. Above all, The Friendly Orange Glow at last reveals new perspectives on the origins of social computing and our internet-infatuated world.

1 edition

Kian Ryan reviewed The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear

A piece of computing history that you may be unaware of

4 stars

Following the PLATO education project from it's genesis in the 1960s through to it's demise in 2015, "The Friendly Orange Glow" follows the people who developed, and used the system in it's various guises.

PLATO is a completely different take on computing compared to the work that was going on at Silicon Valley during the 1970s, with different audiences, different goals and ultimately different hardware. Those motivations brought some innovations that wouldn't appear again arguably for a few decades - touchscreen driven input, high resolution displays, notesfiles, multi-user games, real time chat. Many of these functions were built by the community that grew around the system.

The book goes to great length to detail the story of the people at the heart of the project, such as Donald Blitzer and users of the system, such as Brodie Lockard who was paralysed after a gymnastics accident and went on to author …

Following the PLATO education project from it's genesis in the 1960s through to it's demise in 2015, "The Friendly Orange Glow" follows the people who developed, and used the system in it's various guises.

PLATO is a completely different take on computing compared to the work that was going on at Silicon Valley during the 1970s, with different audiences, different goals and ultimately different hardware. Those motivations brought some innovations that wouldn't appear again arguably for a few decades - touchscreen driven input, high resolution displays, notesfiles, multi-user games, real time chat. Many of these functions were built by the community that grew around the system.

The book goes to great length to detail the story of the people at the heart of the project, such as Donald Blitzer and users of the system, such as Brodie Lockard who was paralysed after a gymnastics accident and went on to author Shanghai for the Macintosh.

The book takes time to discuss the politics at the educational institutions involved, and the attempts to commercialse the project, the successes and failures. It follows it through the various incarnations to being finally turned off with a handful of users in 2015.

A good read, and if you've read histories of Silicon Valley or the UK micro scene, this adds a very different perspective.