Brian Dear: Friendly Orange Glow
Show #202 | Guest: Brian Dear | Show Summary: Before Facebook, before Apple \u2013 before even the Web itself \u2013 a small group of researchers and students created a digital community that\u2019s all but forgotten. Created as an educational tool, the PLATO system \u2013 like the internet decades later \u2013 broke out of its prescribed limits and took on its own life. Messaging communities, computer games, even online social protest have their roots in this handful of monitors casting their \u201cfriendly orange glow\u201d on the faces of this select few. Brian Dear interviewed dozens of them to get this special chapter of modern history in writing before it blinked out of memory.