Doc Kinne reviewed The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear
An Amazing History That Never Mattered...
4 stars
The book is good and complete. However, in the end, it is probably the saddest computer book I've ever read.
It is amazing what the PLATO system started - both in software and culture - in almost all ways at least several years before anyone else. But no one ever heard about it. It's ideas never got out, never got noticed by the mainstream.
We all tend to believe that inventors are singular people. How would the world be different without Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? PLATO show us that the world probably wouldn't be different. We would just have different names attached to the things we already largely know.
Still an amazing history.