PLATO PEOPLE is a website documenting the ongoing progress of research and oral-history-gathering for a new book on the history of the first online community, the PLATO system. PLATO originates from 1960 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Designed as a system to deliver interactive instructional lessons via computer to thousands of simultaneous users, the system accidentally became a microcosm of the web and the internet and AOL all rolled up in one: email, message forums, instant m