GoKawiilRay Ozzie recalls how PLATO's late-night culture shaped his software career
In a conversation, software pioneer Ray Ozzie described his early exposure to computing at a high school with ARPA-funded terminals and later at the University of Illinois, where daytime coursework meant punch cards but nighttime access to the PLATO system revealed a thriving online community with chat, messaging, and forums decades before the modern internet. He credits this early, informal exposure to networked computing with shaping his later work on collaborative software.