[Air-l] The History of that "Other" Internet: PLATO

[Art McGee]

Quite scary that this just popped up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/business/yourmoney/01BOSS.html

New York Times

December 1, 2002

Speaking Mind to Mind

By Ray Ozzie [Written with Glenn Rifkin]

There's no question that right from birth, I was a nerd.
My grandfather was a sheet-metal worker for the Illinois
Central Railroad, and he had this great workshop in our
house. I was fascinated watching him bend sheet metal
into things like a pot for my grandmother.

I got the entrepreneur's bug from my father. He founded his
own insurance agency, and as a kid I would hang out at the
office, stuffing envelopes, doing odd jobs. My father taught
me: if you have a passion, go with it. He loved people,
talking to clients. But he said to me: "Never become an
insurance broker. I know you. You're not the type."

Instead, he encouraged my love of technology. He brought
home chemistry sets, dry cells, light bulbs, switches and
things like that. I built signaling devices around the
house. We built a crystal radio set together.

I had my career-defining moment in college, in the
early 1970's. I was an electrical engineering major at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and had a job as
an electronic technician. On my way to work, I kept passing
this building that had a strange orange glow emanating from
the windows. I looked in and saw people sitting at rows and
rows of terminals.

The system was called Plato, a computer system built in the
late 1960's by Don Bitzer, Paul Tenczar and an amazing team
of bright, eccentric, creative individuals. It was unique
and way ahead of its time.

Of course, I wangled myself a job as a systems programmer
on Plato. There were a thousand terminals connected to the
mainframe, half on campus and the other half at universities
around the world. It was amazing. It had instant messaging,
e-mail, online discussions, interactive games. Remember,
this was 1974!

I was assigned to work on a project online with a programmer
in a different part of Urbana-Champaign. We worked for months
without meeting. We'd use instant messaging, which on Plato
displayed a message in real time, keystroke by keystroke.
My partner was obviously brilliant but an incredibly bad
typist. It was excruciating, waiting for each letter. He
constantly made mistakes. When I finally met him, I was
stunned: he was a quadriplegic and had been typing with
a stick held in his lips.

I realized at that moment that the computer was a
medium that enabled communication with people mind to mind,
regardless of their physical well-being. You can work with
someone without prejudice, and their true talents will be
shown. And from then on, I started to focus on how computers
could help people work together more effectively.

After graduation, I said to myself, "By hook or crook,
I am going to build software to recreate the interactive
environment I'd used with Plato." That thought led to the
creation of Lotus Notes, which sits on nearly 100 million
desktops, as well as everything else I've done.

---

Ray Ozzie is chief executive of Groove Networks, a software
company in Beverly, Mass.

Copyright (c) New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

-end-

Art McGee
Communications & Technology Consultant
amcgee at freeshell.org
(510) 967-9381
Circuit Riders International
<http://npogroups.org/lists/info/riders>
NPO/NGO Media & Technology Calendar
<http://amcgee.freeshell.org/mtcalendar.html>
Critical Issues in Pan-African Life and Culture
<http://lists.aas.duke.edu/mailman/listinfo/afroam-l>
Black People Love Us!
<http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com>
APC ActionApps
<http://www.apc.org/actionapps>
Information Awareness Office
<http://www.darpa.mil/iao>