The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

Answer to the title question but not the second one: I decided to go into computer science after reading "The Turing Omnibus" by A.K. Dewdney. It was like my brain was let loose in a candy store. I must have been insufferable that summer, always talking about Boolean logic and perceptrons and Turing machines and NP-completeness. Answer to the second question but not the title one: "The Friendly Orange Glow" by Brian Dear is a well-written history of the PLATO computer system and, most importantly, of the community that grew around it.

Also read its counterpart "The Friendly Orange Glow"

The Friendly Orange Glow : The Untold Story of the PLATO system and the dawn of cyberculture (2017) is a really interesting book about a system few people here would probably have heard of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-or... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-orange-glow) How the Internet Happened is very good. The podcast that was created while writing the book is also worth a listen. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-the-interne... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-the-internet-happened) Accidental Empires is also very good https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires