Program 6: 4:15pm - 5:30pm

An early Online Community: People Plus Computing Grows Communities

Abstract of Talk
The developers of PLATO didn't set out to build an online community. So how did it turn into one?

In 1972 few suspected that a human community could grow and thrive within the electronic circuitry of a computer. But two years later the world's first online community was flourishing on PLATO, using technologies that didn't become widely available elsewhere for decades: discussion forums, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, presence awareness, screen sharing, and multiplayer games.

Today's social computing is different -- but not all that different than what existed "back then" on PLATO. This panel will explore the similarities and differences, including the early elements in place at PLATO that led to its success. How did the community organize itself? Why was it so successful? What was missing? What can we learn from these experiences? What's next?

PLATO's core technologies, originally developed with educational purposes in mind, incidentally provided tools that were readily adapted to social features like Group Notes and Talkomatic. Those tools, along with the freedom Don Bitzer gave his staff to follow their own interests and explore free of timelines or managerial pressures, allowed PLATO's online community to evolve rapidly and without any overall plan.

With that as background, the panel will focus on the reality that while there were innovations with their genesis at PLATO (notes, in particular, which was recreated on many other platforms by those exposed to GNotes), other of the connecting technologies were independently created elsewhere, in part because of the drive of humans to connect, communicate and build communities. What does this tell us about humans and computers? What insights does it provide about future uses of computing for connecting people in professional and personal settings?