The history of Lotus Notes and the influence of PLATO.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

The history of Lotus Notes and the influence of PLATO. A journey through long forgotten software genres and product categories.

https://computer.rip/2026-03-14-lotusnotes.html

#lotus #plato #retrocomputing

[humanhorseshoes@mastodon.world]

@amoroso we had a notes database of software, manuals, drivers and documents called Genie that was based on the then IBM owned Lotus notes, database replication was the main issue back then

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@humanhorseshoes Was replication unreliable?

[ukscone@cupoftea.social]

@amoroso one of my favourite non-fiction computer history books is The Friendly Orange Glow about the rise and fall of PLATO and what could have been.

I caught the tail end of the PLATO era via a TI99/4A in a store in Leicester

http://friendlyorangeglow.com

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@ukscone I read the book, really great.

[as400@mas.to]

@amoroso

This is kind of strange to me that people who never worked with a given software (author admits it) write articles about it.

At the time of Lotus Notes 4.6 it was much more performant and easy to maintain than Exchange.
I knew many big international companies that relied on Notes. Long after Exchange took the world people were still saying "I will send you a Note".

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@as400 I used it only as a user.