Review: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Five star books get that high ranking from me when they deliver an emotional connection. Sometimes it is because of a topic covered, at times it is the strength of the writing that forges that connection. Here, it is a linkage between a topic of great, career-building interest to me, computer history, with my own history. With an author that can mix these things together, creating interesting and varied stories along the way, you have a great book. I found “The Friendly Orange Glow” to be a great book, although I expect that opinion will match that of a very small cadre of fans. This book tells the story of the Plato system, used principally for education but later morphing into one of the first interconnected systems for electronic communications and gaming. Most of the book covers the creation of the system and its growth, mostly in the 60s and 70s. My personal connection was as a gamer in the early 80s at the home base for Plato, the University of Illinois’ CERL. I spent many nights (you could only play games after 10pm) in the CERL Plato classroom among the glowing orange touchscreens of the Plato system. Many early games are described in the book, from the perspectives of the game authors as well the players. I haven’t thought about these games in decades but this really brought back intense memories. I was interested to learn that the Plato system represented many developments that later became commonplace on the internet, including message boards, instant messaging, notes groups, shared screens, and the like. Authors on Plato went on to create popular computer games like Flight Simulator and Mah Jong and ubiquitous applications like Lotus Notes. This history-making computer system was enabled through a very open environment with try-anything leaders, always willing to do a demo. Much of the early system work was accomplished by interesting kids from the neighboring Uni High in the goings on, and later hiring them. The book follows the Plato system through its initial development at CERL and other colleges, through the years that CDC attempted to sell it around the world, and to its demise.

This is a great book for a detailed telling of the history of this computer system. The author provides stories of many of the players on the team building and selling Plato, and developing applications. This would be a good business book for those looking for an example of open door recruitment, as well as the use of non-traditional employees. And it provides a detailed example of what can go wrong in moving a research project to commercialization. I found the commercialization section the least interesting parts, though mainly because they were mostly about missed opportunities. Overall, an excellent computer history.

“The Friendly Orange Glow” was written to counter the lack of credit that the Midwest, in particular Illinois, gets in computer history. Here the Plato system gets credit for many innovations later popularized by various applications over the Internet. This is the second book I’ve perused that gave credit to the Midwest, and Illinois, for major advances in computers. The inventor of the computer says that he first wrote down his description of a computer in a bar in Rock Island, Illinois. Maybe there’s something in the water.


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