The Friendly Orange Glow

The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

By: Brian Dear

Narrated by: George Newbern

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.

More than Friendly

The most powerful story, the ceation of Shanghai and the role of the Plato system in so many of today's computer scientists and software. I too was unaware of UofI and its contribution.

A very detailed computer assisted education history!

A marvelously well written account of a very early computer assisted education system. Incredibly detailed anecdotes keeps the story fresh and multiple successes and failures make it all still very relevant. A very unique book because of the depth of details from hundreds of individuals!

Memory lane for the cyberist.

Great job on giving the personal stories, history and culture of Plato, the foundation of our cyber world. I first touch a Plato terminal as a young USAF computer operations officer in 1976. I worked at DEC, daily using VAX Notes, NCS with NovaNet, Pearson and Plato Learning. Kudos to the author!!!!

One of best computer history books

Well-written and well-narrated, this book describes how people evolved together with evolution of accessible computers. Do not hesitate, you will not sorry if you buy this book

One of the most interesting early computing books

Great book that covers about 50 years of computer history in broad strokes as it related to one unknown project during that time. I never had trouble picking it back up to read and intend to read again soon.