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>There was some discussion in the Internet history mailing list about the supposedly vital contribution that PLATO made to ARPANET. Good grief. The Friendly Or

by TMWNN 4y ago

>There was some discussion in the Internet history mailing list about the supposedly vital contribution that PLATO made to ARPANET. Good grief. The Friendly Orange Glow certainly doesn't claim that, so to hear that people would claim otherwise is mystifying. It's that relative lack of contribution to what would become the Internet that caused PLATO's relative obscurity today in computing history compared to Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT's contributions (and, probably, the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that I imagine drove the discussion you cite).

AlbertCory 4y ago
internet-history@ is an old-fashioned mailing list, so you can probably read the archives if you want. As I recall, there was someone there who really resisted the consensus that PLATO didn't contribute much.
- felixgallo 4y ago
  with respect, it contributed immensely. USENET traced a lineage to PLATO notesfiles. That was the http equivalent until http came along.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    How many entries in the RFC index have PLATO developers as authors? It sounds like there should be a few, at least.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >USENET traced a lineage to PLATO notesfiles. I am aware of no such connection. Usenet is a product of Duke and UNC, not UIUC. More to the point, its specifications are very similar to that of the near-contemporaneous SMTP. AlbertCory mentions RFCs; both Usenet and SMTP are fully described in various RFCs. PLATO is not. PLATO did inspire Lotus Notes; Ray Ozzie attended UIUC.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Yeah, like you I'm just challenging the claim that they contributed to the Internet. OP claimed some credit for USENET, and I said "OK, then what RFCs did they contribute to?" I never really thought about PLATO being described in an RFC. But "the internet" is: TCP, SMTP, DNS, SNMP, Telnet, FTP, BGP, etc. etc. "Intellectual influence" ? Sure, ok, but usually that would show up as citations in other publications.

by TMWNN 4y ago

AlbertCory 4y ago

internet-history@ is an old-fashioned mailing list, so you can probably read the archives if you want. As I recall, there was someone there who really resisted the consensus that PLATO didn't contribute much.

felixgallo 4y ago
with respect, it contributed immensely. USENET traced a lineage to PLATO notesfiles. That was the http equivalent until http came along.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  How many entries in the RFC index have PLATO developers as authors? It sounds like there should be a few, at least.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >USENET traced a lineage to PLATO notesfiles. I am aware of no such connection. Usenet is a product of Duke and UNC, not UIUC. More to the point, its specifications are very similar to that of the near-contemporaneous SMTP. AlbertCory mentions RFCs; both Usenet and SMTP are fully described in various RFCs. PLATO is not. PLATO did inspire Lotus Notes; Ray Ozzie attended UIUC.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Yeah, like you I'm just challenging the claim that they contributed to the Internet. OP claimed some credit for USENET, and I said "OK, then what RFCs did they contribute to?" I never really thought about PLATO being described in an RFC. But "the internet" is: TCP, SMTP, DNS, SNMP, Telnet, FTP, BGP, etc. etc. "Intellectual influence" ? Sure, ok, but usually that would show up as citations in other publications.