Transcripts For CSPAN2 Brian Dear The Friendly Orange Glow 20171223

Presentation for our website, and it would be dracting to have a ring tone sound out speaking of the recording we want to be able to hear everyones questions clearly during question and a portion so please come to the mic on either side or actually right over here on my left. For tonight it also a if i could ask to fold your chairs and it would be a big help to even of the event staff here at the store. Sorry. Now to our guest, brian deere, hes founded multiple companyies like eventful and coastal net computing, hes written for publications such as Educational Technology, iee expert an san diego reader, hes experienced in the field of computer based education, especially the plato system short for program october for automatic teaching operations for individual. Plato and engineers shape the early digital age with his influence chat room and instant messaging and screen savers and more created at the very beginning and friendly orange dploa is aisle history. Publishers weekly cause it exuberant history offering lively portrait of the energy and creativity that a network can unleash. Recreation convey excitement of tech no logical innovation and free reeling of the team. So i will now turn your attention to brian deere. [applause] thank you everyone for coming im really, really honored to be here thanks to politics and prores of the bookstore i have to say a guy gigantic fan ive been watching the events in this bookstore for at least two decades through booktv and cspan, and on youtube and i feel like i know the place backwards and forwards i recognize that font anywhere for the different section of the book. So its appropriate that today is cybermonday because plato computer im about to speak began on beast called the cyberand in plato era cyber culture meant plato and it hadnt really turned into a term that meant anything else but that, and remarkably as well talk about in a little bit more detail tonight this entire story has been almost kept classified in a way. Its so unknown and well go into that in a bit. So the way i organized this talk was to first think about the title of the book just to rehash that friendly orange glow, untold story of the plato system and the dawn of cyberculture, and theres basically four themes in that tilings and what i found helps people sort of gain a gradual understanding so we can arrive somewhere in about an hour and we now know something a little bit more about afl this stuff is to actually imagine rearranging title a little bit. And thats how ill do the discussion and start with plato system and then talking why is it an untold story and then well talk about friendly orange glow and what the heck that is, and then well spend a lot of time on dawn of cyberculture. And then well have time for question with and answer. So lets dive right in and talk about the plato system. So what is this thing . As we heard in the introduction, the acronym stands for Program Logic for automatic teaching operation os which is a real tongue twister. The material was coined in 1960s so this goes way, with way, way back. And basically the idea, vision of plato back in 1960 only a few years after mechanical machines were starting to be built at harvard and some other places to attempt to teach subjects to students particularly Grade School Kids and also some college students. The idea was, you know, we should try to use a computer because it would be much more efficient. Much more flexible and that sort of thing and really two catalyst and part one with of this book theres three parts to the book part one is the automatic teacher, part two is the fun they had and part three is getting to scale. And part one is really the origin of plato and a factorses that led to it and theres three that i think you could boil everything down to one is bf skinner who was a behavioral psychologist of some repute on how you look at him. At Harvard University who had seen his daughters arithmetic class in 1953 this is how i open this book many 1915 sitting there and he just cannot believe what he sees. And what he sees is to all of us im absolutely sure completely routine and boring and just mundane. He sees a teacher walking up and down the aisles of a little classroom with 20 boys and girls all in fourth grade, and in a math class and shes writing problems on the board. And those students are asked to solve math problems a enshes Walking Around checking peoples work pausing here and there that sort of thing, and naturally some of the students finish before others and thats what drives skinner crazy. Because hes like you know, this is inefficient this is not as you know, systemic as it could be not as easy as it could be o. You know, every student should be able to finish whenever they want and not have to wait for the rest are of the students. And you know he then ran back to his office and within a few days he started building with cutout folders a prototype of a teaching box you might call it. And within a few months he had sort of quote unquote perfected it presented at a major conference, and it kind of operated like a primitive scrolling player piano might with little hole and scroll of paper and as we went through answers encoded on the paper, and you know, the question might appear in a tiny box saying what is 3 plus 2 and you would have move sliders and indicate answer is five and if you answered you couldnt move forward if you answered accident is you couldnt if you answered five you pulled this slide or which is right out of a slot machine im sure you kaching and move to next question leak what is four plus five or something. And you know, the way i look at this is there was this gigantic leap because you, if you think about it for a moment it really takes gigantic leap to go from a nurturing human teacher to a box with scrolling paper inside it which is supposed to be doing everything that a teacher can and should do to educate american children. Nationwide, and yet everyone thought gee what a great idea. So we have the idea with skinner where did the money come from and money came from something happened in 1957 a which was the soviet union launch orbit the everett and when that happened everybody kind of freaked out you can imagine if it happen haded today it would be be scrolling bottom of cnn and fox and Everything Else all of the pundits talking it be wells thats all they talked about for month and months nation either in a panic or near one and something had to be done clearly the soviet he is beat us out because of you know theyre better educated they know math, they know science better. What we would today call Stem Science Technology engineering math. So the government very quickly formed nasa it form od arkansas arpa project agency that created a massive new act of legislation called defensive act that basically meant heres a whole bunch of money who wants it . And lots of schools, lots of universities, lots of businesses wanted it and said well well try to improve education, and the third catalyst was the arrival in the eminent availability of Digital Computers which started really finally becoming commercially available in the late 50s and by 1960 when plato started were starting to be all over the place which meant there were 20 of them instead of two but you know, within every month they were probably doubling. University of illinois saw this as an opportunity to get into a major project that would be of great educational import po. They viewed it as a pure experiment least they have that skepticism i dont think they have the pure vision that skin ere had his approach was the way to go. Plato people used the skinner idea i think as a launch pad rather than as were going to translate all of those ideas to the computer. So that is basically how things started arriving. The part within of the book goes into much more detail about that. But basically all of this is driven by a vaccination and if you look at any tech project whether it is apple, google, facebook, snapchat no matter what is out there today just like ebay or anything microsoft, apple going all the way back in time, everyone of these Tech Companies has a vision. And basically every Technology Project starts with a vision and it usually is something that is a reaction to something that exist already. And the attitude is we can do it better, smarter cheaper faster Something Like what, and some combination or o all of them. And plato was no different. Even though it was 1960 it was no different. And just is like the jet airplane was rejection to profeller airplane which was probably reaction to, you know, we this earn just continues it is predictable and something that im really pass nated by for example you see that i would argue that facebook could never have existed without myspace and my myspace wouldnt have existed without friend store and google wouldnt have had reason to o exist without being reaction to ulta vista if they have a bell from the 90s, 20 years ago thats so weird. So the plato vision was to build this incredibly flexible responsibility and within of the reason ares of skinner wases things have to be immediate, feed back needs immediate you dont want to finish math problems and then wait for the rest of the class thats a total so with a computer, the idea was thats actually easy. Was it turned out it wasnt. But it became one of the imperative it underlying bullet proof mandates of the plato philosophy i guess the computer plato philosophy of a project to make sure system was insanely responsive as we will see lrp some prizes that surprises that came with that that attack up all of part two of the book. E port, this vision was really about we will build the greatest most flexible computer platform ever mailing has had any teacher would any training will sit down and compose po any lesson, tutorial educational game whatever is appropriate to their students they will build and they did deploy to students and all will be good, and this drove the vision with the passion and clarity i would argue of the Apollo Mission all during the 60s and a i think its interesting that you know kennedy gave his famous speech in aye 61 right few months after plato project started and you know the optimism of that era we can get someone to the moon surely to build a computer that can, you know, basically teach any student in the United States. So you may hear the the phrase and if you open any u newspaper or magazine todays just browse arranged social media youll hear about news about Educational Technology as a phrase. You hear at schools talk about all of the tile School Board Debate it all of the time. Should we spend more millions on it. What is it, that kind of thing, and thing you immediate to understand is during plato era which is really the birth of modern Educational Technology, the idea was that that definition of thinking was that Educational Technology means technology that educates. And that i think, is very different than had a lot of what passes for Educational Technology today which is more how do we spend millions to teach students how to tweet or o use facebook in an educational setting or o use google that searches and email all of the camibility of google or whatever company is offer aing service but i. T. To university and psychologicals and there isnt anywhere as near teaching through the system. But backs in the 60s and the 70s and 80s with mission of plato and competitor to plato the idea was were going to teach. With this system and and the teaching and it was a pretty revolutionary and controversial idea. So lets move on to the untold story. Its a trite expression and iftion tempted to call it a friendly orange glow but wind up novel section here in the bookstore, which might not have been a bad idea. But in this case untold story i think it is about as accurate and bewilderingly accurate as you can imagine because there are no books, no magazine articles, no movies no documentaries no 60 minute segment, no, you know, programs that you have ever seen on plato anywhere never been a big wired cover story or back cover story is on in middle cover story Silicon Valley plato doesnt exist thats all well and god and as it should be. So it this has created a challenge for an author who is writing a book about plato because usually when you try to do a history of something, you go to the sources and as the first, you know, step and you read what had everybody else is one, and problem is no one has ever written anything on plato so i had to go around and interview everybody and it took you know about 30 plus years and i did 7 Million Words of Interview Transcripts that i typed myself that took a few years. But it was only way to get source material was to go talk to people and luckily theyre still around. And a that gets to an interesting issue which we dont have time to talk about tonight. Tblus but theres a difference between history and journal whism youre trying to dig up a story. Some have described me as a historian and aisle not that. Rotten have that training i read a lot of history. But wing that story recent and majority around, still answerable on email and phones, this was in more keeping up with journalism profession or o practices if not profession so i approached this a little bit of both. You know i had to go talk to everybody try to figure out what this story was. What took a few years a. One thing to think about it wases in a small town surrounded by many, many miles of corn. Literally, i mean, it its an island of green go there in the summer and youll see what im tag about. Five minute miss any direction and youre surrounded by cornfields ten feet high. And what i have always been blown away by with plato is the fact that even at the university of illinois, i think its arguable that theres another computer thats more famous than plato thats the howl 9,000 from movie. And thats fictional. It was, you know, quote unquote invented in the 1990s if youve watched movie or o read the book, and there are event where is they celebrate birth of how in urbana, and i went you know to one of them and im going around going yep, but what about plato. You know and theyre like what, who, who . The greek guy no hes down the hall in philosophy. So this is kind of thing were up against trying to document history and try about to skip around to keep things moving but that talk and try to address this untold story thing because it really is a huge factor many this book it is kind of like this book was an effort to solve a mystery in the mystery was what the healthk isplay tone and why do people who experienced it have this still this wide eyed vision like you know we saw the future before any of you guys. Kind of thing and the future being what everyone is doing now which is this all day long. So we were all a staring at the screen 40 years ago. Imagine discovering that a small group of people had invented a fully functioning jet airplane capable of plying Long Distance at hundreds of Miles Per Hour decades before the Wright Brothers cast their praj l craft into the wind for 12 seconds other North Carolina sand dune in 1903 imagine how a discovery could disrupt our common understanding of history. The story of plato a Computer System so far ahead of its time and perhaps least known major 20th century Technology Project may strike you as just as impossible a a story as as the 19th century jet. But plato really happened. It is a story of hackers, genius and educators in the very heart of the american midwest a story that so disrupts a conventional view of History Technology that it may make you woundser as it made this wonder how could this have happen haded where are book, magazine article, documentary, music display, that should have covered this story . Why has this story gone untold why are we only finding out about it now . We celebrate the rise of the arp and internght, the worldwide web, we with celebrate the accomplishment of Palo Alto Research center in turn inspired lisa and Macintosh Computers within computing environment we still use today and innovation produced by legend of Startup Company and placed into hand of millions now billions of people innovations that have changed the world innovations people cannot challenge living without. Were living the very shocking future that alvin wrote about warned us about 45 years ago in history how we reached this future has been research studied, analyzed organize od and desystem nate pad far and wide for long muff that the stories become legends set in stone nerds geex and hacker no longer outcast and ridiculed but fought leaders many counted among tens of thousands of recent mlg their and hundred was billion gnars but list of hero names in the computer rev lyings quote un, quote, is long but theres equally long list of unknown computer pioneers that people who stories pill the pages of this book. The whrefl to plato and people and history have been ignored extraordinarily given how early onis Line Community floor herbed by how roongtly it whatted. Plato was a Computer System but more important it was a culture. Physical and onis line. A community that formed on its own with its own jargon custom and own cast thousands world particular to us yet foreign. And entire era that clashes with accepted history of computing social media online communities, online games, and line education it is as if advance civilization once thrived on earth dwelled mooing us built to woundous technology disappeared as quietly as they arrived leaving behind art facts only a few notices this book is a result of an fort to capture had the history of this loss cull orture had of innovation before it vanishes completely by someone with Great Fortune to come of age to become digital quote unquote concern as it were within the very within that very culture, and there shall having a chance to get to know some of the people there their stories, their vision and their amazing technology, technology that we all now recognize and use. This book is a imagining it is about steam technology, textile loom and model or more recently macintosh Google Search engine or o tesla electric car has at its core a vision. And so moving on to part three the friendly orange glow rying to explain what thats all about. Its not any term i didnt make it up. It is very i love the term but it wasnt me. It was something i heard all of the time from plato people when i interview people all of the time, they would i guess the term is wax rep about the friendly orange glow. I will say that the very, very first time i saw plato at the university of delaware in 1979 i was in the Music Building and im walking wondering through campus first week i was just brand new freshman i didnt know anything. And i see this darkened classroom in the Music Building except theres all of this orange reflection on peoples faces with headphones on, and theyre looking at very High Resolution screens that are all orange graphics. And its all musical notation on top just beautiful as on a sheet music and bottom half of the screen is keyboard and people are reaching out playing notes as if theyre on piano and hearing them in heads pones that is not what you heard what about computers were. Usually it was stack of cards and you stuff them l into some read arer and it just some priest somewhere comes out and shoes you away and they take card and run it through a job, and maybe a few days later you get your jut put all error and you have to start over again. So here was this interactive graphic orange computer and i was hooked. So first time i saw it. I had no idea but plato is orange is really remarkable and consumes a lot of the product thats described in part one of the book. In some ways its a sad story because with i think its simply took too long to get out to production. And if u youve ever heard of the thing called moores law which, you know, Silicon Valley has made trillions of dollars by which basically saying that the cost of chips computer chips is dramatically falling every year. And that the seed of the processing is dramatically doubling every year. And that is basically stayed straight all the way till 2017 since like 1965 its just unbelievable. So in the meantime plato project needed to coming with a display for many, many students to use at terminal to interact with this teacher system about are thats what it was all about, education. The problem was that computer memory in 1960 o, 61, about 2 insanely expensive to give you an idea how expensive it was basically 2 per bit. Now, theres 8 bits in a byte. And most of you have probably a smart phone with you that has 16 gigabytes or 32 whatever android or apple whatever, or o 64 maybe. So a twice would have cost 265 million each. And you would need computer memory to run every display terminal that was going to be on this system well that would have cost about 500,000 for just minimal amount of memory per terminal per student and you can imagine in schools where teachers cant even afford chalk for the chalkboard, where are they going to cough up 500,000 per term mall for each student you know that numbers just didnt add a up. So you know, engineers being engineers they saw it this as an opportunity rather than are a problem. That they, you know, they could go invent something. And what they came up with was really a fundamental patent from 1960s that ironically the press immediately saw what the future was in the plato people didnt. Basically they invented a flat Panel Display that was, you know, quarter of an inch thick. Filled with neon gas, and it was the plasma display that would later become Plasma Television same invention there may be one with hanging on wall but many homes have them. And as early as mid60s the media would come down to illinois and interview the smises and look at the single pixel at that one point one dot trying to prevent that and go aha this is the future. Future is flat television it is like wow. We get it. And of course plato people no, no it is education. Education, education and tv and you know media people were like no, it is television its television. So you know, thats what it takes to have really focused mission you know critical vision, and they stuck with it. They were building this for education. And not for entertainment, and as well see so much for that idea that didnt last long. By the time the early 70s very early 70s they had a 256 gi 256 very primitive four po inch by four inch screen property type so they packed that up in a incredibly goldberg box that the engineers nicknamed a possum trap and they kartd that off to washington, d. C. To present to the National Science foundation to get big, big funding to roll this out o commercially or o notly but in a major multimillion dollar experiment at the university of illinois and in surrounding Geographic Area all the way up to chicago, and let me read to you the scene from that dem know it is classic ccel is computer based research lab, Engineering Technician ray and jim tasked with taking one of the four inch prototype plasma panel to incorporate into a full sized plywood markup of the plywood for terminal for the demo the result was a big blue plywood pox with a tiny square screen in front and center with with lid on the top of the tbox open but you have to be careful fiddling about inside and we call it possum rap but it was a slide mechanism but it was possible to get your hands caught many if you werent careful and maybe hands cutoff. The carefully set off the big blue poses some trap terminal set up cable and got live connection up and running remarkable this is about 71, and theyre doing a lifelock distance telephone connection all the way back to the computer which is i guess about 1200 miles away. This wases not normal in 1977, 71 but perfectly normal in world of plato they did demo all over the world. Everything worked fine during the test and then just as were about to make the presentation, just before we had difficulty with the phoneline says canogi then plasma display didnt light and moments before it was about to start Electronics Inside terminal so extreme that he had doubts about possum trip that survived trip out to washington but it made it and other technician he is taken great care to jengtly set up nothing and not working two seconds before donald o founder of plato hes the showman and he did all of the demo was about to start. He ended what any leader does when hes about to go on with demonstration to determine whether his project is funding from United States government or not me he took his hand and slammed the side of the possum trap hard my heart went into my throat when he slams side of the box which again was so sensitive but by some miracle whole thing will the ilit up with text on screen and phone line came through and we were ready for the demonstration and that was that was pretty much the way things went with plato demos. Just one quick comment, they really did did build these big bulky terminals that were size of small washing machines and they really did have microlive projectors in them. You have to understand this a plat panel glass is sheet of glass basically only a quarter of an inch thick and its transparent so there were mirrors behind it in the terminal at the top was will a projector to project being, being, and out, color o photos from taken from slides and put on to a microfuse plastic, you know sheet. Superimpose texting graphics on top of that so it was best of both worlds in term affairly rich multimedia environment for multi70s but wasnt video we didnt have that yet but it was pretty darn impressive. And to add to the goldbergness of this kind of setup this slide mechanism ran on compressed air that meant you would have to cart around a huge tube of compressed air to the demo and, of course, airlines eventually caught on that this is not a good thing to do. [laughter] not a goodling to transport you know what exactly is in that tube, sir . And so eventually they have to resort to bringing some kid along who would sit on top of a basketball and provide necessary pressure. So lets move on to dawn of cyberculture, and the first thing to think about is really culture, the laboratory was a very, very special place, and none of this would have ever happened i would not be standing here this book would have never been written had not the culture of this laboratory been so unusual and so special. And unusual that computer in 60s and 70s often were locked up places that you were not allowed in. And you basically better be wearing a lab coat and be a post dock if youre expecting to have access. Even at places at m. I. T. And stanford their labs are legendary too but they were generally restricted and it was hard to get into. The lab at suro notorious for being so open and management so loose that people joked that there really wases no management and there was no no reare strix on who could just wander into building building to very interesting things and a philosophy behind it that i discovered which is remarkable then and totally applicable now i think. The folk who is ran are the lab from bitser on down welcomed min from gender any age if you were a kids and you showed promise in interest and a determination and in other words you were a pest and you kept coming back they said if youre not going to go away try are this. Solve had problem and if you can solve that well give you another problem. And they just would repeat, repeat eventually might say youre solving a lot of problems do you want toe get paid and kids would go like i can get paid to have fun . You know, wow. Who needs a degree, but that was another problem. [laughter] and so what you found all during 60s and then in a tidal wave in the early 70s was word got out all over champagne that it was cool place to be with cool orange computers, and it was the home of the orange glow baskly. And people wodgedder in across the street where there was a a Laboratory School run by the university called uni high and those kids had had it lucky because they were literally strown throw and they run in all of the time and i document stories of a number of those kids because they became incredibly instrumental in building a lot of most famous features of plato. And part two of this book dives deep into this era of how i guess you could call it Youth Culture took over plato and what is ironic about it is plato agains a thing about educationing to build a teacher out of a machine and thats what is going to teach students and thousand were discovering that the students are like you know youre teaching machine is very cool. But you know, theres a lot l more you can do request this thing. And they ironically started teaching adults what you could do, and for most of part two of the book i just go through a remarkable series of innovation ares that they brought to system on their own teenagers some of them not even in college yet, and many amazing period 12 month period between 73 and 74 you suddenly saw chat room, instant messaging, message forum, email, massive multiplayer games, basically the original dna for almost everything you see mow. Was formulated then, in fact, a lot of original Design Elements that that people, you know, write ph. D. In present day video games were all present on plato in early l 70s. And whats also remarkable i was talking about fact that a lot of Times Technology is created in response to the inned adequacy f technology and there werent a lot of predecessor to kind of social computing capability that kids brought. They wanted to just yak but they wanted to hang out online with their friends and you know, it wasnt with like there was a previous system what did this and they had all seen it and usedded it. This was literally novel no book, magazine and no predecessor at all. One person told me a great quote which im rying to draw from memory so i may not get exact in the book where basically you know they thought they had built the worlds greatest education mall teaching machine but what, in fact, they had built was world greatest pinball machine ever built. And it is really ironic how over the course of the 70s and a into the 80s so many students both in high school and in college would be exposed to plato which by then had many thousands and thousands of hours of lessons available on subjects from, you know, anthropology to zoology and everything in between the science, humanity, literature, french, latin, russian, hebrew all kiengdz of amazing tutorial and simulations that were still remarkable to this day, and you know ironically for many kids not the majority but for more of them interesting thing was plato, and they wanted to know how they could bend and shape it and transform it. And ironically again, oftentimes what that led to was them either dropping out of school or being forced to leave school because their grades plummeted to zero, and even that turned out to not be such a bad thing which in a way as a precursor to what would happen many years later with Silicon Valley you know coming in and just mr. Speakerring plucking kids out of computer classes at stanford or m. I. T. And joining google whatever, and kids got message quick why do i node a full degree if i can be making 6 figures by age 20 . And i mean theres also the story of steve jobs and bill gist and Mark Zuckerberg all of the rest who dropped out of school and went off to become billionaires so a pattern and a lure concern interestingly with the plato era, there wasnt the draw of hundred. There wasnt the spell of riches that could pour on you the way that so many people sort of take the internet today almost like a gold rush thats perpetual we didnt that i didnt see that when i was exposed to plato so the commercial sort of mercantile side of of the social computing luges had not happened yet and speaking of revolution, i used this book to put a historian hats on. I sort of have a challenge for real historians which is fine prior examples where Something Like plato existed and i would site the evidence the copy use evidence that ive accumulated many this book as evidence that the social interpersonal computer revolution would suggest but was thriving before the personal computer revolution ever got started. That was basically historical hair city so you heard it first here tonight but i argue that it is just look, tack to the people. Go look at the evidence what you had on plato in early 70s you know, the era when the founders of google were in diapers. And apple and microsoft have years before they would be incorporated and those kids were still teenagers. What you have was a thriving mature onis line world people completely addicted to the system and ironically the plato system moved many phases plato one, two, three, and four. With roman numeral started 1960 two started this masters degree 61 plato lee lasted till about 71 and plato four was big deal the thing that nfs funded irony is there for many students it wasnt plato roman newel rile but intravenous because it would be like addicted to spend too much of their lives online today and let me just read a little passage that i think will help describe this phenomenon before i do i want to mention one experience ill remember vividly from being at the university in delaware and freshman year i had some friends come up to visit. They were from High School First time at delaware and you have to see the future, it is orange. Theyre like yeah, whatever. Show them this thing and for years trying to describe what it felt like to me to try to show this thing were special enthusiasm to my friends and finally figured out it is probably something that everyone can relate to and that is have you ever tried to get your pet to watch television . In other words get your dog to sit in front of the screen and they will theyll look at the screen for a minute with that blank expression and if it were a cartoon character you know, with the eye would have swirls you know like like that and then a squirrel. They are not seeing it. They dont get it. And i kind of have impression that that was the way it was. Here i was like this is the future and that is what had were doing all in ten, 20 years and it is already here. You know chat room i mean you can instant message people and screen sharing you dont know what that is but it is cool, and then had it was kind of like when are we going for beers . So one way i describe this in the book is as follows only a few minutes exposure to plato four enough to know. Generally upended view if one were to accept how books with, movies and media betrayed them plato was evil soflt ware intelligence first after something going horriblely wrong now bengt on humanity and it was in 2001 how looking back at through you through a round red glass eye. Nor was plato some boring number crunching tape machine card reading behemoth pound but plato was your friends looking back at you through friendly orange dots. And i also describe it which ill just paraphrase in interest of time but imagine in the 70s if youre having dinner with the family, and you happen to casually mention oh today i chatted with people in hawaii, new york, illinois, and a delaware. And they look at you with great who horror because of the phone bill cost now it was through term talk on plato and theyre like term what . And then you have to spend next hour of dinner painstakingly explain mag it means to chat with someone online and why that is an interesting thing to do and why it is fun, and its besides fact that had it is free. By the time dinner is over your family members would have run for the hills and nots even been around table. Now contrast with today if the family is even sitting around the same table at dinner theyre probably all sitting there with one fork in one hand and smart phone or tablet in the other. Everyone individually immersed in their own private online world chat hadding or o talking with their friends and reading news feeds. And oblivious to the issues, concerns or o discussions that are going on from anyone else around the table. And what theyre doing is equivalent socially online on plato in the 70s. And you know today they wouldnt bat an idea if you say they loved someone in hawaii or o Something Like that but it was a major to try to explain it. But one way i describe this is with teenagers is create what Silicon Valley would later call the killer app which you know has always been defined or least simplest way i have is it is poem and most powerful compelling application to use all of the fancy technology is just connect people together, and all the rest is just noise. But what people really use computers for and nowadays is getting, you know, finding out where people are are going what had theyre doing and what theyre thinking and what their opinions are and that sort of thing good bad or ugly one thing we have all learned that it is Just Technology skilled, so has scaled the good, the bad and the ugly. Which you know something we can talk about. So o i dont have time to run into this with part three. But basically what part three is about is this dream of getting all of this Educational Technology to scale. And its the same dream that every startup has today you have an idea in the garage. Or at the Kitchen Table with your laptop or whatever you get a couple of collaborators together you do a Startup Company maybe you get funding man you get some traction. A lot of maybes but thats the way it works. Maybe you go viral and scale is a few billion people were long past a few, you know, thousands or few even tens of millions when i was doing my startups having 20 million was amazing. Now thats considered you know to be very have concerned about. But so ill just briefly mention that the university of illinois did it something incredibly daring which had never been done and that was, you know in the series of first and pioneering efforts, they decided to license technology they had built to a commercial company, and the nsf was in horror, the university is like what . And the lab was like, you know, even they couldnt quite understand it. And yet after two years of lawyers they pulled it off and in 1976 plato was essentially sold xecially to a Company Called control data. Which does not exist anymore which is about where ill leave it whole story of control data and reason ares why it didnt work or become viable are a Harvard Business School Case Study times 100. And if as for no other reason i urge anyone with any daring of imagining going into a start why or doing some kind of entrepreneurial effort to think about learn a lesson from control data because they are the classic lessons that are repeated you know over and over again. So with that why dont we open it up to questions. [applause] so thank you very much for reading this is a great talk. Thank you. So just maybe a few guesses, why was it unknown. Why is it still unknown . What is a curse . Of the i think one thing you know i liken it to start to what i did years ago in movie going space which concern i learn is defined as m word to Silicon Valley if you even dare so mention movying to Silicon Valley they completely freak leave the conference rooming lock door call the cops and you know check to see if youre gone yet. Its not a popular project to dive into. Even though you think it might be fun. In the toe plato world it was e word for education so safe to say that neglection the United States has never been like a first class buzz word. Its second or third class, and as the microcomputer revolution roared on in the 70s and 80s, and exploded and people started making money in wall street woke up to realized this was future gold rush and still beginning on now and money making became really the thing, and the technology pace of technology scraitd so fast it still dizzy the internet rose up web rose up and computer far more powerful capability than anything ever had rose up and plato was Still Mission oriented to education even though itd all of the stuff that had all of the imreents to own the internght they could have owned personal computing even e talk about in in detail how controlled data the engineer built a personal computer in 1975 that did everything that the ibmpc did in 19 l 81 they have a six year head start and cdc rule was if you can plug it into the wall, its too small. They felt it has to cost one million and up and control data corporation, and well they paid the price. As the microcomputer revolution were on. So economics were one thing. The fact that it was education oriented even though social sufficient was there even though i think documented now that it was the interpersonal computer revolution starting before the pc revolution. It was mostly dog staring into televisions. They just didnt quite they didnt rock it and see what it was. Not enough of a critical mess appreciated what this dizzying future o was going to be. If you think about the 60s, every depiction of computers even in star trek, you know, ironically were getting become to star trek now with the google home and the amazon device which you go, you know, i wont use paparazzi because theyll probably trigger devices all over country when this airs. But ill say it anyway goggle home order one million copies of a friendly orange glow. [laughter] watch this system crash. But you know now like in star trek computer working. Calculate distance to this planet. Thats nine light years, whatever. No notion of social, with any depiction of computers, even how the 900 anything was all a of the same old thing you talk to it. That was considered futuristic and unfortunately thats where were headed it is interesting what that does to social which is, you know, will it become something that fades away, with i doubt it because i think killer is here forever. But anyway. Yeah. The gigantic mainframe and the different world this make me think of a new machine, of course, and its great that this all come forward because its been a world that has been magic and mystery in so much in history. But im looking at what weve got now i think about companyies like leapfrog that do Educational Technology in the sense that you mean it. That help people learn and i wonder if it any of the technology from the from the plato world actually came forward to what you use today in learning applications, and devices and things like that. Based on what i looked arranged and saw i would say very little which is another tragedy, what i have found in years of looking at field of education and training both and it is reare peteedly reinvented and gigantic waste of resource to pete reinvents thing and many of the things that were invented in 60s and u 70s on plato even the 60s particularly very powerful capables in the system to judge the type to response that a student might make. Really you know, you could type o in natural language you could type this very scientific equations, chemistry symbol whatever plato just gobbleed it and knew exactly what you were talking about. It was very flexible and allowed you to make mistake not exact like what had skinner would have done. It has to be very flexible and a patient with the student even with typo and stuff a lot of that judging capability still hasnt been replicated and other thing ill say is what one as i said before the great vision of plato was to get the system to point where it was so incredibly flexible that anybody just a mere mortal could sit down to create magnificent interactive lesson for their students you didnt have to be a computer wiz or o Rocket Scientist you could just be a math teacher or english teacher or o something. And that vision basically failed, and the promise was to work on education like it had on chip hads every year cost could come down and cost of production over an hour of interactive Student Learning would come down, and not only did it not come down but it has gone up every year, and so to produce a big interactive course now is no different than what it cost to produce a big interactive video game to budget of which are very similar to the budget of hollywood films were talking 100 Million Dollars to develop a superhit game to sell a billion, you know, copies or o something look that. So cost of production never fixed itself. Yeah 37. I was one of the kids who spent many years starting from the age of 11 i mean, i spent nights, you know, i was there 11, 12, 13, and it was interesting hearing you talk about openness was culture so thats what i found jerp rei glenn and don mentioned in the book and they were ones who came to the school where all of the faculty went an started recruiting to teach us computer programming. And i emailed you so we had a bit of a discussion one of the aspect about that open culture was some molestation and abuse of kids. And you know what you said was that nobody that you didnt tell the stories you knew about the stories but you didnt tell them because nobody would go on the record. And so im here. Im on camera and not mention anytimes because you advised me not to say anything because theres rich people and e should get a lawyer. Ive had a really hard time figuring out how to deal with this with the me too movement and your book coming out and i have a 12yearold son who is, you know, in a program who is you know, one of those kids who might end up with one of these molesters. So you know i just wonder like what are chances of bringing out some of the these stories and just letting parents know about individuals and institutions where their kids are at a risk. Even today. What i would say is what ive said for years is that, you know, spotlight came out i use that as the example in the guide book for i think what had is needed to be done to get Something Like this in a legitimate, you know, well researched well documented bullet proof way out to the public in a way that perhaps could be prosecuted you know if thats the course thats appropriate. You know, i got to say im not a lawyer. And in my, you know, i didnt seek out this stf what i found is that it was not happening with the staff of the of the lab. These were peripheral folk who is happened to be running some classes that kids were in. And yet, no one in 20 yearses of people cooling to me more than 20 years of people coming to me would anyone go on record every Single Person insisted on silence and not mentioning this many everything. So you know, i didnt see a story there for me to pursue you know it i put a journalist out will there wases mog ictd do with it. And you know if theres something out there sounds like there may be, there are probably organizations what can help get this sort of thing done, and you know probably the best way to start is to look at the organization that were mentioned in spotlight because they really are do exist and theyre out there that might be best way to get going. I mean not much i can do in my book again it is just not a story that was documented no one would name names or anything. So you know or go on the record and so you know, theres nothing i can do with it. And you know i talk to lawyers about it, and a you know, they baskly agreed with me that you know, unless i can get, you know, a real long series of depositions, and then it becomes a completely different project to what i was doing bairvegly document didding history of plato first and foremost you know what you find when you study a very large group of people in any walk of life is probably bad operator but human naimp and theyre going to do bad things, and you know it could overwhelm a project to document the core project thats going on in this case plato, if i dwelled on that but i kopts dwell on it because i had nothing to go by. So you know, i wish you luck. You have at least one person with a followup. Right. Thanks so much for coming i really appreciate it. I will be sticking around if they want to get a book signed. Thank you. Lets step beside the register and if you can please fold up your chair. Thank you. Youre watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup, first up cohen former New York Times tech columnist details the growth of Silicon Valley and the impact it has on politics and public policy. Then at 8 45, rachel discusses the Impact Technology has had on trust. Then on booktvs afterwards at 10 p. M. Astronaut scott kelly recalls record setting time in space hes interviewed by former nasa administrator Charles Boldin and wrap up our time time programs at 11 that provides history of the civil war. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv, 72 hours of nonfiction authors and books this holiday weekend