
Performing History on PLATO: A Response to a Recent SIGCIS Presentation - eternalban
https://medium.com/@brianstorms/performing-history-on-plato-4c501b8f2068
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eternalban
From OP:

Rankin’s presentation makes assertions about the PLATO system, its developers,
its users, and its online and offline culture at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the 1960s and 1970s, that paint a decidedly
negative picture, one where Rankin declares PLATO suffered from “endemic
misogyny” and that she likens to a “fortress of patriarchal heterosexual power
in American computing.” Such a description stands in stark contrast to the
picture described to me by roughly a thousand PLATO people over the course of
more than thirty years of research. (The result of this research is my
upcoming book The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System
and the Dawn of Cyberculture to be released by Pantheon Books in November
2017.)

Rankin’s conclusions appear to be based on misunderstandings, historical
errors, omissions, and confirmation bias, resulting in a general thesis that
PLATO was a horrible woman-hating environment. A response and correction is
urgently needed, in light of the fact that this presentation was given under
the auspices of SIGCIS, a group devoted to a scholarly, nuanced, and accurate
recounting of the history of computing, the fact that the conference was co-
produced by and held at the prestigious Computer History Museum, and the fact
that Rankin says that her talk comes from an upcoming book, A People’s History
of Computing, to be published by Harvard University Press. At least as far as
PLATO goes, I feel it my duty to address each of Rankin’s points and clarify
the history to the best of my ability based not only on extensive past
research but also present-day comments from actual PLATO people who have
viewed Rankin’s video, including a number of people whom I contacted for this
article and who are identified by name in her talk and who were physically
present at the PLATO lab decades ago.

