Gosh, it sure seems like this author got a lot of this history from the "Gas and Glass" chapter of my book THE FRIENDLY ORANGE GLOW (Pantheon Books, 2017), which is a history of the PLATO system including the invention of the plasma display. Or maybe he got it from an AI that got it from vacuuming up my book.
Funny how the article has zero citations or notes.
Your book looks like it will be fascinating! I ordered through bookshop.org since I already have an account, but do you have a preferred retailer for others who might want to buy it?
I read your book years ago, previously knowing nothing about PLATO. Loved it, couldn't put it down. Thanks for writing that. I learned so much about a really interesting part of online history, and I still think about your book frequently. It's one that really stuck with me.
Before LCDs won the race to price affordability, there were many competing novel approaches to display technology. Many engineering teams were based in the south bay but they all lost out to LCDs which won out by being good enough at the time at a price people could afford. Lots were vying for government contracts (this was a time when Japan "owned" compact display technologies.) Obviously they all lost out to LCDs and derivatives.
People are creating agents that get pirated PDF copies of books and them make articles out of paraphrasing entire chapters to generate youtube AI slop videos and SEO slop blogs.
One could always copy things without credit. It was always up to people to have ethics and cite their sources.
While we should hold AI companies accountable, I feel like this one is on the person making the LLM generate, without also making it come up with sources (which it can do!)
No, if you build a machine on plagiarism that plagiarizes on command for money, it’s absolutely your fault for making the lazy option so easy and affordable at scale.
Funny how the article has zero citations or notes.
So it goes.
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