Some quick comments on this book review from the author of the book: 1. The vision didn't ultimately fail. It lives on in all sorts of ways today -- we just do

Some quick comments on this book review from the author of the book: 1. The vision didn't ultimately fail. It lives on in all sorts of ways today -- we just don't recognize it as having come from PLATO. 2. The review seems almost eager to celebrate the demise of PLATO before we get a chance to know what PLATO was. 3. I don't bemoan the failure of teaching machines: if by that the reviewer means Skinner devices. 4. The reviewer calls the book "a worthy addition to the history of computer science" which is misleading -- the book has little to say about computer science, and computer science and computer scientists had very little (nice) to say about PLATO. This is not as book by, for, and about computer science. It's a book about a big slice of American history, a biography of a technology vision as lived through the cast of characters who lived and breathed that vision. 5. The reviewer seemed to miss the whole point of Part II of the book, which is the most interesting and fun third of the book -- how the hacker kids took over PLATO in the 70s and brought forth what I call the "interpersonal computer revolution" before the personal computer revolution even got started. PLATO was the best early example of social computing but you'd never know it reading this NATURE review, which is a shame. I urge folks to check out the book themselves.