PLATO Notes is the progenitor of:
- Lotus Notes
- DEC Notes (aka VAX Notes)
- NetNotes/WebNotes
- COCONET
- Notesfiles (used on PeaceNet and the other
IGC/APC networks)
- tin and tass (Usenet newsreaders)
Here are some other first-generation conferencing
systems that emerged in the early to mid-1970's:
- EMISARI (1971, Murray Turoff, U.S. Office of Emergency
Preparedness.) This was a special-purpose system used for 90 days to
coordinate the Nixon administration's wage-price freeze. It is generally
recognized as the first computer conferencing system.
- PLANET (Jacques Vallee, Robert Johansen, and others at the
Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California.)
- Confer (1975, Robert Parnes, University of Michigan.) Confer
is the parent of Caucus, PicoSpan, and YAPP.
- EIES (1976, Murray Turoff, New Jersey Institute of Technology.)
Centralized Forums
Centralized forum software originated on mainframes in the early to
mid-1970's with systems like PLATO Notes, Confer, and EIES. These were
designed specifically for group discussion, and they treat messages as
part of an ongoing conversation with some inherent structure. Discussions
are stored on one central computer, and each new message is assigned a
place in the discussion structure immediately upon being posted. Over the
years this line of software has evolved sophisticated features for
managing and participating in conversations.
Within this arena, there is another identifiable subgroup of products
whose designs have been derived from Confer, a system originally developed
in 1975 by Robert Parnes. I call these products "WELL-style"
conferencing systems, because the WELL has been very influential in
spreading this design. There are a number of features that tend to appear
in WELL-style conferencing software, but the most readily identifiable
feature is that it structures discussions as linear chains of responses,
and displays each discussion as a continuous stream of text.
Examples of WELL-style Web conferencing software include:
- Backtalk
- Caucus
- COW
- Motet
- Web Crossing
- WELL Engaged
- YAPP
Examples of other centralized forum software for the Web include:
- Allaire Forums
- Big Mouth Lion
- HyperNews
- NetForum
- Podium
- Post-on-the-Fly Conference
- TALKaway
- WebBoard
- WebNotes
- WebThread (by Emaze)
MTS Fostered Creation of Computing Community, by Susan Topol,
Information Technology Digest, Volume 5, Number 5, 13 May 1996, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp. 1, 27-29.
According to
Bob Parnes, architect of the Confer system, "MTS was our
system; it belonged to the University, not to a corporation."
Confer became a common means of communication as students
organized their own conferences and CRLT staff members convinced
instructors to set up course-related conferences.
"MTS and Merit/UMnet allowed many people to communicate
electronically for the first time both one-to-one — using e-mail
— or one-to-many — using e-mail, newsgroups, and conferencing,"
said Christine Wendt, then computer systems consultant for Merit.
"So many people today are impressed by the Internet and the
World Wide Web, but after more than 15 years of conferencing and
e-mail using MTS, I have a feeling of 'been there, done that.'"
E-Mail and Confer
In the mid-1970s, the next great computing revolution on
campus further expanded the U-M MTS community. Bob Parnes,
then a graduate student studying experimental psychology, was
attending a seminar in which Professor Merrill Flood was
discussing the new concepts of e-mail and electronic conferencing
and their use in decision making. Flood had a magnetic tape of
a prototype system and approached Parnes about getting it to
run on MTS. Parnes declined, but offered instead to attempt
writing a similar program for MTS.
Because of a graduate teaching assistant strike, Parnes was
temporarily relieved of his teaching duties and had some extra
time to devote to his experimental system, which he called
"Confer." MTS served as an excellent development
environment for Confer, which was built on top of the MTS file
structure and exploited its filesharing features. According to
Parnes, "I don't think I could have written Confer anywhere
but on MTS."
Confer played a tremendous role in enlarging the electronic
community at the University and in removing the traditional
geographic borders of the classroom and campus. Said Parnes,
"Confer enabled a lot of people to talk together who wouldn't
have otherwise."
The U-M Center for Research on Learning and Teaching was an
early sponsor and proponent of Confer and saw great promise in
it for expanding learning environments. Those working on the
Merit Network were also excited by the potential for Confer,
and they created the MNET:Caucus conference to help users get
quick answers to their questions and take some of the load off
their consulting staff. It turned out that the participants —
both consultants and users — learned a lot from each other
through the conference. MNET:Caucus, a statewide conference,
later became the first campuswide computer conference.
Not only did Confer offer the opportunity for various forms
of group discussion, it also served as the first e-mail system
on campus. The MTS message system (or "$MESSAGE") was
introduced in 1981. Written by Jim Sterken, $MESSAGE allowed MTS
users to send and receive e-mail. Gavin Eadie and Jim Sterken
then enhanced the message system to include remote mail — the
ability to exchange e-mail with users on other systems. The early
e-mail exchange was done over Mailnet. Mailnet was eventually
replaced by BITNET and the Internet.
Although $MESSAGE eventually surpassed Confer as the e-mail
facility of choice on campus, the computer conferencing portion
of Confer continued to thrive. Parnes went on to form his own
company — Advertel Communication Systems, Inc. — which markets
and supports Confer.
A Century of Connectivity at the University of Michigan, Nancy Bartlett, et al., Bulletin No. 55, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, December 2007.
1975: Ph.D. student Robert Parnes developed an innovative conferencing software program called CONFER as “an alternative to face-to-face-communication” for partial fulfillment of his doctoral degree in philosophy. The first CONFER was called K4HS:RP.Confer.
- Confer Conferencing System
-
``Confer'' is the name of a conferencing system written in 1975 by
Robert Parnes at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
It was a predecessor to the Picospan and
Caucus conferencing systems.
Confer pioneered many of the design features in Backtalk. [Backtalk is a conferencing system developed by Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss.]
