[ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet

Sun Aug 22 20:50:07 PDT 2021

I'll just pick up on one thing you said:

*the charset editor (which inspired Xerox PARC to do a bitmap graphics
editor for the Alto),*

This is easily checked. Charles Simonyi is still around, as is Tom Malloy.
Are they going to argue with that, or accept it?

On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 8:35 PM Brian Dear via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> No disrespect, but I can’t help chuckle a tiny bit reading these
> assessments/dismissals of PLATO by ARPANET folks and computer science and
> engineering folks. (I’m reminded of the movie Amadeus, when Mozart is
> commenting on Salieri’s music.)
>
> Of course there’s no PLATO influence on ARPANET or “the Internet” at the
> low levels, including protocols, etc. PLATO’s utterly custom architecture
> was designed for a very specific turnkey education system with homogenous
> hardware. That was its mission.
>
> PLATO wasn’t designed for packet networks, which had too much overhead for
> the fast responsiveness PLATO's creators insisted on (in my book I call it
> “the fast round trip”—about 120ms character echo response time 100% of the
> time).
>
> In 1973, a team at UC Santa Barbara spent about a year attempting to
> connect a PLATO IV terminal, with the fancy gas-plasma graphics display, to
> the ARPANET, in order to play the games that was quickly becoming legend on
> PLATO (see RFC 600).
>
> Writing off PLATO as “just another time-sharing system” completely misses
> the point of PLATO’s narrow, specialized purpose and mission, funded by
> ARPA and NSF, and more importantly misses the historical significance of
> the explosion, starting in 1973, of unexpected, yet incredibly clever and
> creative applications that were built on top of an architecture intended
> for delivery of interactive computer-based educational lessons,
> simulations, testing, and so on. This explosion of unexpected apps
> contributed by the user/hacker community included TERM-talk (live 2-way
> instant messaging in character-by-character typed chat, which Unix people
> later implemented as “talk” on that OS); chat rooms (akin to early IRC, but
> also live character-by-character typed chat this time in multiple channels,
> some open, some private); monitor mode (full screen sharing while in a
> TERM-talk), Pnotes (PLATO’s email application), TERM-consult (live tech
> support chat with online support teams), Notes (PLATO’s message forum
> system), the charset editor (which inspired Xerox PARC to do a bitmap
> graphics editor for the Alto), and of course the countless multiplayer
> graphical games, including tons of MUDs, 3D space and airplane simulators,
> etc. There was no other time-sharing system that had the applications PLATO
> had, nor the platform for creative expression that PLATO had in the 70s.
> But it meant nothing to the ARPANET crowd and was essentially dismissed as
> unimportant.
>
> PLATO’s always seemed to me like a "digital Galapagos." It evolved off on
> its own, with few if any predators, utterly disconnected from the rest of
> the world. The rest of the world would choose—wisely—to build a
> heterogenous network of protocols and standards to which all sorts of
> hardware and networks of networks could connect. That was a brilliant
> solution that enabled scale—something that was going to be exceedingly
> difficult, impractical, and expensive to do with PLATO. So we wound up with
> the Net and you had PLATO becoming more and more foreign and impossibly
> exotic and detached. However, PLATO hackers went off and worked at Apple,
> IBM, DEC, Data General, Sun, Atari, Google, and many other places.  (PLATO
> Notes was the direct inspiration for Ray Ozzie, a PLATO software engineer
> and student at U of I, who later who named his Lotus application “Notes”,
> which about 100 million people used for a little while, but I digress.)
>
> Years later, in a 25000-square-foot exhibit of the first 2000 years of
> computing, the esteemed Computer History Museum chose not to include any
> PLATO hardware or software or mention any of the countless innovations done
> during that era by that community, and in fact the only fleeting mention of
> the word “PLATO” in the entire exhibit space at all was (and I don’t even
> know if it’s still there) found inside a small glass exhibit case near the
> end of the long IKEA-like maze through the museum rooms, that depicted tiny
> screen shots from AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy . . .  and PLATO . . .  with a
> little caption dismissing the whole lot as examples of “walled gardens."
>
> So it goes.
>
> - Brian
>
>
>
> > On Aug 21, 2021, at 7:25 AM, John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Yea, the display technology was interesting but otherwise it was just
> another timesharing system, and really not all that great of one. Here is
> part of what I sent them last night off-list. I didn’t think others would
> be interested. I have said it here before:
> >
> > To refresh others:  Our group was the ARPANET node at Illinois and
> developed 3 OSs from scratch. One proven secure, and one which experimented
> fairly deeply with the leverage of an extensible OS language, in addition
> to the what is recounted here. Pete Alsberg became the manager of the group
> at one point (slightly tweaked):
> >
> >> Around 75, Alsberg was teaching an OS class at DCL. One of the Plato
> guys was taking the course. They were in the process of building the new
> Plato OS. They did a computation in class and predicted that the system
> would top out at so many terminals. (Well, below their target.) Soon after
> that, Alsberg was at a party with the guy in charge of the system
> development. (The name is on the tip of my tongue, I can see his face.
> Remind me of a few names, it wasn’t Bitzer, Finally came to me. (Weird) It
> was Paul Tenszar (sp? that doesn’t look right) ). The guy got a funny look
> on his face. They had hit the limit that day and it was within one or two
> terminals of the prediction.
> >>
> >> As I said earlier, we put the first Unix on the ’Net in the summer of
> ’75. Got a few of the Plato terminals. Stripped down Unix to fit on an
> LSI-11, added touch to the screen. all on a short cabinet that so you could
> sit at and use it. Hooked up to NARIS the land-use planning system for the
> 6 counties around Chicago as an ‘intelligent terminal.’ You could do maps
> down to the square mile with different patterns for use, the usual graphs,
> etc. all without a keyboard. (it had a keyboard but it was only needed for
> data entry.) We also installed a few of the terminals with different
> application in DC (Reston), at CINCPAC in Hawaii, and possible a few others
> I don’t remember. While we were doing that, we also added non-blocking IPC
> to UNIX. All it had was pipes. NARIS was a distributed database application
> that used databases on both coasts and we used the ARPANET. We did a fair
> amount of distributed database research in that period as well and worked
> out the issues of network partition, which as near as I can tell are still
> not clearly understood.
> >>
> >> I am afraid we just didn’t see Plato as all that interesting, a
> traditional mainframe and terminals system. And they pretty well kept to
> themselves. We were probably both wrong.
> >
> > Take care,
> > John
> >
> > The reason I remember the one at CINCPAC was that one of the stories
> that got back was, that they had been invited to an evening at the CINC’s
> home. The next Saturday morning our guy showed up at CINCPAC in a T-shirt
> and shorts to work on the installation. The guard was giving him grief,
> when the CINC strode in. Greeted our guy with a friendly remark about the
> gathering a few nights before and headed on in. The following conversation
> ensued: The guard a bit uncomfortable: You know the CINC? Yup. You know him
> pretty well? Yup. Errr, I guess it would be okay.  ;-) And our guy was able
> to get to work.
> >
> >> On Aug 21, 2021, at 07:58, Vint Cerf via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I worked on ARPANET from 1968-1972 and then started on Internet in
> 1973. I
> >> joined ARPA in 1976 and stayed there working on Internet until end of
> 1982.
> >> I visited the campus, met with Don Bitzer in the late 1960s (hazy
> memory),
> >> was impressed by the display technology, but, honestly, do not recall
> much
> >> influence on the Internet work. It was certainly an example of
> time-shared
> >> application that could be expanded by way of networks like ARPANET and
> >> Internet but I don't recall direct influence on, e.g., protocol
> >> development, packet switch design, application layer protocols.
> >>
> >> v
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 4:35 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
> >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I will. I was a DCL rat, and we'd just occasionally meet people from
> PLATO,
> >>> but that was it.
> >>>
> >>> I had a friend who took Latin and they used PLATO. I also used it in a
> >>> Psych 100 experiment. And that's the extent of my contact.
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 1:30 PM Brian Dear <brian at platohistory.org>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Bob,
> >>>>
> >>>> Might I suggest, if you’re curious about PLATO, you rely on a more
> >>>> in-depth history, available in my book The Friendly Orange Glow: The
> >>> Untold
> >>>> Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture (Pantheon,
> 2017)
> >>> [1]
> >>>> which that 33-minute podcast episode seems to be a hodgepodge summary
> of.
> >>>> In the real deal, my book, you might find a more engaging exploration
> of
> >>>> the historical, technological, business, and societal influences of
> PLATO
> >>>> and why it’s important.
> >>>>
> >>>> Regarding your being at U of I at the same time: if you were an
> undergrad
> >>>> from say 64-68, there’s a very good chance you would not have come
> across
> >>>> PLATO which was still in its formative stages and not deployed widely
> at
> >>>> all on campus. Things started scaling significantly around 1972 with
> the
> >>>> launch of the CDC CYBER mainframe-based system that grew to over 1000
> >>>> terminals, all over campus. However, if you were working on a Master’s
> >>>> degree within the ivory tower of the CS dept from 68-73, a dept that
> with
> >>>> few exceptions looked down upon PLATO as a silly toy not worthy of
> even
> >>>> brief curiosity, it’s possible you still would have overlooked it.
> Even
> >>>> though DCL was very close the CERL lab on Mathews Ave.
> >>>>
> >>>> Anyway, check out the book—it’s all about the Illinois story, as well
> as
> >>>> the influence (in both directions) between the PLATO project and the
> >>> Xerox
> >>>> PARC Alto/SmallTalk/Dynabook projects.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Brian
> >>>>
> >>>> [1] http://amzn.to/2ol9Lu6  (Amazon link for the book)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jul 5, 2021, at 6:06 PM, Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
> >>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I just listened to the episode
> >>>> <
> >>>>
> >>>
> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-computing/id1472463802?i=1000511301793
> >>>>>
> >>>> about
> >>>> PLATO on The History of Computing podcast, mostly because I'm being
> >>>> interviewed for it tomorrow on my book
> >>>> <
> >>>>
> >>>
> https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Future-Albert-Cory/dp/1736298615/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
> >>>>>
> >>>> .
> >>>>
> >>>> I know we've covered this before, but I think the "influence" of PLATO
> >>> is a
> >>>> bit overstated. I hesitate to be too dogmatic about that, but after
> all,
> >>>> you would think I'd have heard more about it, being at the U of I at
> the
> >>>> same time as he's talking about here. Maybe it had more influence at
> >>>> *other*
> >>>> sites?
> >>>>
> >>>> On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 11:48 AM John Day via Internet-history <
> >>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Forgot reply-all.
> >>>>
> >>>> Begin forwarded message:
> >>>>
> >>>> From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
> >>>> Subject: Re: [ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet
> >>>> Date: June 10, 2021 at 14:46:35 EDT
> >>>> To: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
> >>>>
> >>>> Plato had very little if any influence on the ARPANET. I can’t say
> about
> >>>>
> >>>> the other way.  We were the ARPANET node and saw very little of them.
> We
> >>>> were in different buildings on the engineering campus a couple of
> blocks
> >>>> from each other, neither of which was the CS building. This is
> probably a
> >>>> case of people looking at similar problems and coming to similar
> >>>> conclusions, or from the authors point of view, doing the same thing
> in
> >>>> totally different ways.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I do remember once when the leader of our group, Pete Alsberg, was
> >>>>
> >>>> teaching an OS class and someone from Plato was taking it and brought
> up
> >>>> what they were doing for the next major system release. In class, they
> >>> did
> >>>> a back of the envelope calculation of when the design would hit the
> wall.
> >>>> That weekend at a party, (Champaign-Urbana isn’t that big) Pete found
> >>>> himself talking to Bitzer and related the story from the class. Bitzer
> >>> got
> >>>> kind of embarrassed and it turned out they had hit the wall a couple
> of
> >>>> days before as the class’ estimate predicted.  ;-) Other than having
> >>>> screens we could use, we didn’t put much stock in their work.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> (The wikipedia page on Plato says it was first used Illiac I. It may
> be
> >>>>
> >>>> true, but it must not have done much because Illiac I had 40 bit words
> >>> with
> >>>> 1K main memory on Willams tubes and about 12K on drum. Illiac I ( and
> II
> >>>> and III) were asynchronous hardware.)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> As Ryoko always said, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
> >>>>
> >>>> John
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jun 10, 2021, at 11:48, Clem Cole via Internet-history <
> >>>>
> >>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> FWIW: Since Plato was just brought up, I'll point a vector to some
> >>>>
> >>>> folks.
> >>>>
> >>>> If you read Dear's book, it tends to credit the walled garden' system
> >>>> Plato with a lot of the things the Internet would eventually be known.
> >>>>
> >>>> How
> >>>>
> >>>> much truth there is, I can not say.  But there is a lot of good stuff
> in
> >>>> here and it really did impact a lot of us as we certainly had seen
> that
> >>>> scheme, when we started to do things later.
> >>>>
> >>>> So ... if  you have not yet read it, see if you can get a copy of
> Brian
> >>>> Dear's *The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System
> >>>>
> >>>> and
> >>>>
> >>>> the Dawn of Cyberculture* ISBN-10 1101871555
> >>>>
> >>>> In my own case, Plato was used for some Physics courses and I
> >>>> personally never was one of the 'Plato ga-ga' type folks, although I
> did
> >>>> take on course using it and thought the graphics were pretty slick.
> >>>>
> >>>> But, I
> >>>>
> >>>> had all the computing power I needed with full ARPANET access between
> >>>>
> >>>> the
> >>>>
> >>>> Computer Center and CMU's EE and CS Depts.  But I do have friends that
> >>>>
> >>>> were
> >>>>
> >>>> Physics, Chem E, and Mat Sci that all thought it was amazing and liked
> >>>>
> >>>> it
> >>>>
> >>>> much better than the required FORTRAN course they had to take using
> TSS
> >>>>
> >>>> on
> >>>>
> >>>> the IBM 360/67.
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
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> >>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>>>
> >>>> --
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> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> --
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> >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
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> >> Vint Cerf
> >> 1435 Woodhurst Blvd
> >> McLean, VA 22102
> >> 703-448-0965
> >>
> >> until further notice
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