Prehistoric Blogging

Gilbert Cattoire sends us to the Grapenotes site. There you can read the archive of stories written by Dr. Gräper, the nom de PLATO of David J. Graper, an undergrad at the University of Delaware in the late 1970s. PLATO was a mainframe-based network for delivering “interactive multimedia programs to students at a number of universities, government institutions, and corporate centers around the world,” according to the site. Because humans will form groups where we can, one of the first online communities created itself on PLATO. Dr. Gräper wrote a series of stories, essays and observations that achieved underground notoriety.

I’ve frankly had trouble getting engaged by what Dr. Gräper wrote, but, then, it’s not the 1970s, his writings aren’t being published in a semi-subversive way on a mainstream platform, I’m not a college student, and Richard Brautigan no longer seems like such a way cool author. But so what? Graper invented a type of weblogging appropriate to his medium. And that is cool.

[Gilbert heard about this site from David Wolley on whose site you can learn about conferencing tools and about PLATO.]

Categories: Uncategorized dw