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 havin