Who were you friending in 1973

davidw — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:15:08 +0000

It’s the 50th anniversary of what became, arguably, the first digital social networking tool, PLATO. In its honor, the PlatoHistory site has posted a list of what some of the current Big Names in computers were doing when PLATO Notes, its message board, went live. There’s also a free conference, with Donald Bitzer and Ray Ozzie keynoting; Bitzer created PLATO and Ozzie founded Lotus Notes which was originally modeled on Plato notes.

(For the record: in 1973, I was spending a year between college and grad school, being a handyman, writing badly, and pining. And you?)

Plato and chat

davidw — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:17:53 +0000

Im reading Julian Warners “From Writing to Computers,” published in 1994. In a wonderful chapter he looks at the senses in which the Western tradition thought documents contained or were intelligent â€” written documents “appear to understand what they are saying,” Plato says. Warner looks carefully at Platos Phaedrus, a seminal text for those concerned with the transition from oral to written cultures. Thats the one where Plato worries that the onset of written documents will ruin human memory: Those who acquire the skill of writing “will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources.”

Plato has another complaint: Writings cant respond to questions: “writing involves a similar disadvantage to painting. The productions of paintings look like living beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn silence.” Ive taken these quotes from Plato from Warner pp. 58-59.

Makes you wonder what Plato would have made of chat, IM, and SMS.

Tags: plato julian_warner chat sms im

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Who were you friending in 1973

Plato and chat