This book tells the story of the first computerized system to assist in the learning process: PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations). The system was created at the beginning of the 1960s, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) was established there with the mission of maintaining PLATO and developing it further. Aside from its original role as a teaching tool, PLATO also evolved surprisingly into a social media platform, with instant messaging, message boards, chat rooms, online newspapers, multiplayer games, and the like, spawning an authentic digital subculture and gathering lots of followers.

Author Brian Dear was one of those enthusiastic followers of PLATO in its heyday. He began to work on this book sometime in the 1980s. Initially intended to be a magazine article, the book kept growing until it’s release in 2017.

The ideas related to automated teaching predate computers, and the book presents the contributions of different psychologists in the first half of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the work of B. F. Skinner, who, interested in the materialization of two basic principles for learning (self-pacing and immediate feedback), created a couple of mechanical teaching machines in the 1950s.

The book is organized in three sections.

The first section focuses on PLATO evolution strictly as a teaching tool. Generous space is dedicated to Donald Bitzer, the head of the project, co-inventor of the plasma display, and an irresistible driving force in pushing things ahead. The first system, in 1960, was for one user. The terminal included a television set for the display and a special keyboard for navigating the menus. In 1961, it became a two-user system. Various pieces of software were added, and Paul Tenczar created an authoring language (TUTOR). Changing the mainframe from ILLIAC-1 to CDC-1604 increased the system potential. A multi-user operating system was then created to support 32 simultaneous users. The author was Andrey Hanson, who at that time was just a high school student. Together with a bunch of schoolmates, they created their own computer, REGITIAC. It was several years before Bitzer successfully used plasma tubes for the terminals (“the friendly orange glow”). In the 1970s, PLATO could accommodate 1000 simultaneous users. They were hoping to extend the system to several thousand users, and then to one million users (though this would remain only a dream). Success stimulates competition, and other teaching systems were created, challenging PLATO’s position. The book also mentions SOCRATES, as well as an authoring language (Coursewriter) used with mainframes, graphic terminals, random-access audio, and light pens.

The second section is devoted to the social media capabilities of PLATO. Several software instruments were developed between 1973 and 1974, with several social media aspects in mind. The book takes great care in describing in minute detail several multi-user games created on PLATO.

The final section reviews attempts to commercialize the product. They did not work very well. Control Data Corporation (CDC) implemented PLATO in some industries (aviation, power utilities, manufacturing, finances, and telecommunications) and sold the system to a few universities, both domestic and abroad. They tried (but failed) to sell it to the Soviet Union, Iran, and Venezuela. By the mid-1980s, however, mainframes were rapidly becoming dinosaurs. Microcomputers were taking over.

This book is too long, and not all of the details are relevant. However, it succeeds in catching the ethos of a community of engineers who did some great and advanced things in the 1960s.

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