It all started with PLATO. In the early 1970’s this oddball of a computer
system, built by an unlikely crowd of non-computer scientists at the
University of Illinois, gave birth to a strange new subculture. College
students stayed glued to PLATO terminals until all hours of the night,
fighting it out with players across the room or across the country in
"moonwar" or "dogfight", or feverishly programming their own idea of the
ultimate game. Romances blossomed in locked channels of "talk-o- matic" and
through "personal notes." And through the PLATO "group notes" feature, people
held long-term discussions on just about any subject imaginable: science
fiction, women’s rights, football, the defense budget, rock ’n roll. People
swapped chili secrets in "Recipes", wrote film reviews in "Movies", debated
theology in "Religion", and anonymously advised each other on personal
problems in "Interpersonal Relationships." The poetically inclined left their
latest works in "Poetry", and almost everyone read "Grapenotes" now and then
for the latest in a series of bizarre stories by the mysterious "Dr. Graper."
They were heady times for those of us at the center of it all, and especially
for me, since I had written the group notes program that made much of this
activity possible. As a teenage college kid I found myself elevated to demigod
status by the users simply for having stumbled into a part-time job as a PLATO
systems programmer. In 1973 I had been assigned to come up with something -
anything - that would facilitate communication via the computer. At that time,
it was perceived mainly as a two-way medium to allow us, the almighty system
staff, to talk to the lowly users. Consequently, I built three notes
categories into the program: "System Announcements", "Help Notes", for users
to ask us questions, and "Public Notes" for everything else. "Public Notes"
especially was an immediate hit. Lo and behold, the users were talking mainly
to each other. And despite attempts to limit discussion to PLATO-related
topics, it quickly became a forum where people talked about everything under
the sun.
It soon became obvious that three categories was absurdly few, and I began
plans for an expanded system that could handle up to 60 categories, to be
defined by the system staff. But the critical breakthrough came when I noticed
that users were writing their own notes programs. Some were clumsy to use;
others were better in many ways than the system-provided notes feature. Some
were set up for public access, while others were created only for notes
between members of a group working on a particular development project. But
they were all responding to the pressures inherent in a system where the
topics of discussion were tightly controlled by a select group of systems
programmers. When I realized this, I generalized my program so that anyone
could set up a "notes file" in a minute or two, declaring the topic of
discussion and its accessibility to other users however they wanted. I also
incorporated many of the nice features I had seen in the notes programs other
people had developed. The result was an explosion of creativity none of us had
foreseen. Suddenly everyone was free to express themselves about literally
anything, and whether you were asking a question about photographic technique
in notes file "Cameras" or just scribbling some graffiti in "Pad", you could
be sure that other people who shared your interests would read your note and
respond. The sense of community it engendered was truly magical, and I was as
entranced as anyone.
Looking back, it’s clear that "group notes" was an idea that was floating
around in the ether at the time, and I was merely the instrument of its
expression on PLATO. I can no more claim credit for its invention than Thomas
Jefferson’s quill pen could claim to have produced the ideas behind the
Declaration of Independence. From the beginning, the program I wrote and all
its enhancements were either suggested directly by users or were made obvious
to me by the contortions they were going through to use the system in a way
that hadn’t occurred to me. Not only that, but the same ideas were
simultaneously finding expression on systems other than PLATO. Programmers
elsewhere were independently creating similar computer conferencing programs,
and subcultures like the PLATO community were springing up around them.
Many of us who spent our college years with PLATO have gone on to various
careers in the computer industry. We have always dreamed of recreating the
magic of the PLATO community on a larger scale. In fact, PLATO and some of the
other communities like it still exist, but they are mostly small enclaves,
unknown and inaccessible to the public at large. They are based on large
mainframe computers at fixed central locations, which makes both
communications costs and hourly usage charges prohibitively expensive for the
average citizen. We PLATO folk generally had access under the auspices of
government-funded research programs (or were able to wangle access privileges
from friends who did.) But our experience left us with the conviction that
there was some universal principle at work which produced the PLATO
phenomenon. Because of its function as an education system, PLATO drew in
people from all walks of life, from grade school children to physics
professors, from medical students to prison inmates. And everyone was
fascinated by group notes.
Unfortunately, there has been no clear path to making this kind of
communication generally available. But in the last three or four years
developments in technology have begun to open up some new possibilities.
Millions of people have purchased personal computers, and guess what? Hundreds
of tiny bulletin board systems have popped up spontaneously all over the
country, which personal computer owners can dial into and use to exchange
messages and software. These bulletin boards are generally run by computer
hobbyists as a free service out of their homes. It’s fantastic to see people
taking the initiative to maintain these things at their own expense, often in
complete anonymity. It shows what a tremendous amount of creativity and
enthusiasm exists among these computer pioneers. And it shows the powerful
desire people have to connect with others who share their interests.
Of course, by their very nature as a free service these bulletin boards tend
to be a little flakey. They aren’t well advertised, so it takes some sleuthing
to find ones you’re interested in, and they are liable to quit working for
long periods or disappear entirely without notice. And since they are limited
to one user at a time, it’s hard to get into the more popular bulletin boards.
But there is a growing community of computer users out there, and the bulletin
boards are the attempts of its members to reach out and find each other.
The electronicizing of America is happening. We aren’t far from the day when
home computers will be as common as televisions, and most of them will
eventually be linked into some sort of network. The only question is what form
the networks will take. A lot of large institutions are becoming aware that
there is some kind of lucrative market here and they are groping around in the
dark trying to find it. They would all like to squeeze it into the mold of the
services they are used to providing: newspapers believe that electronic news
delivery is the wave of the future, while department store chains think it is
"teleshopping", and banks are getting excited about home banking services. And
just about everybody thinks they can attract people with access to on-line
encyclopedias and humongous databases.
To us, the answer is clear: people want access to other people. All that other
stuff is fine, but it’s secondary. The bulletin boards have broken the ground,
but the field is still in a pretty chaotic state. To those of us who were
around PLATO seven or eight years ago, this situation seems very familiar.
We’ve seen this happen before, and we know how it all came out. The bulletin
board phenomenon is an exuberant expression of peoples’ need to communicate,
and it’s not something to be controlled. But it does need some organization,
and that’s what we hope to provide.
By running bulletin boards as a business we can afford to offer a broader,
more reliable service. We can support many simultaneous users, so you won’t
get a busy signal when you dial in, and we’ll be able to provide interterminal
games and talk-o- matic (a CB radio simulator.) There will be plenty of space
for people to start up group discussions on any topics they wish. By setting
up small systems in each city we can get by with a low monthly subscription
charge, and users can access the system via a local phone call. Subscribers
will be able to send personal notes to other people on the same system for
free, or to people in other cities for a nominal charge. They won’t need much
in the way of equipment to be able to hook into our system, either. Any
personal computer - even a $40 Sinclair - will work, along with a modem, which
can be purchased for $80 or so.
The local nature of these systems will have some other benefits, as well. We
expect people will use them to post want ads, organize gatherings, discuss
local issues, review local restaurants, etc. You’ll be able to ask questions
like "Where’s the best place around here to get my VW fixed" and get answers
from people who know. In short, it will foster a real sense of community.
We are starting out with very little money, and in a way that’s an advantage,
because it means that ownership and control of the business will be
decentralized. Rather than looking for money from a few big investors, we
would rather grow by finding people willing to invest their time and small
amounts of money, and we’ve designed an organizational structure that will
encourage this.
We hope to to gather together old friends from our PLATO days, the new
independent bulletin board operators, and anyone else who shares our vision
and is able to help.
The institutions trying to get into this market see themselves as information
providers, and their customers as simply consumers. But we know that the most
valuable resource on a computer network is not its databases, it is the users
themselves. Given the chance, people would rather take an active role and talk
to each other instead of sitting back to be spoon-fed. We believe this is a
concept that will take off on its own, given a minimum amount of structure and
a little spark to get it started. Our role is simply to organize people and
technology in a way that will enhance human communication and increase human
options.
We don’t have to recreate the magic of PLATO. It’s already there. We just have
to let it grow.
--
Explanatory note, May, 2008:
In 1983 I was living in San Diego with Jim Bowery and Steve Freyder, two
friends from my PLATO days. We had this plan to start a series of online
community networks based on dial-up bulletin boards. We had a great idea, but
no money, and we were totally naive about starting a business. As a result,
our partnership fell apart and our plans never got off the ground.
But this article laying out our concept is still kind of interesting. It's a
snapshot, taken 25 years ago, of my vision of the future.
