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Video: PLATO Computer Learning System 50th AnniversaryThis forum post is dated 07/28/10. If you feel it is old or outdated, please follow up with a question or comment and someone may be able to update it, or reply with newer information if you have it. Illinois - Software
| Video: PLATO Computer Learning System 50th Anniversary [Recorded: June 2, 2010] Science fiction writer William Gibson once famously said, "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." Such was the case in the early 1970s, when the fourth generation of the PLATO system, evolving since 1960 at the University of Illinois, made its debut. Viewed from today, it is hard to believe that the PLATO IV system could have existed when it did: Terminals with touch-sensitive, gas-plasma flat-panel displays, random-access audio, built-in color microfiche projectors and a powerful authoring language for developing nearly any kind of program imaginable. PLATO was a centralized, mainframe-based system, with very sophisticated terminals connected to it. Its mission was to deliver education electronically at low cost. But it became much, much more than that. It quickly became home to a diverse online community that represented a microcosm of today's online world. Much of what we take for granted in today's hyper-active, always-on world of social media, blogs, and addictive computer games could be applied to what life was like on the PLATO system beginning in the mid-1970s. PLATO, an acronym standing for "Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations, " started as a project of the Coordinated Sciences Laboratory (CSL) at the University of Illinois in 1960. The original goal was to build on the mechanical "teaching machine" work of BF Skinner and instead see if it was possible to build a computer that could teach. In time <b>...</b> |
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