From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner
The University of Chicago Press
It took me a few moons to do so, but I finally finished Fred Turner’s really captivating From Counterculture to Cyberculture this past weekend and my mind will remain reeling from his unusual ideas for some time to come.
Let me see if I can do justice to its premise. Basically, Turner sets about to prove the point that the evolution of culture as it is today is directly correlated to the protest, hippie, and commune movements of the 1960’s, specifically as orchestrated by influential entrepreneurs from San Francisco area, led by Stewart Brand. .
He talks about the bureaucracy of organizations in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and of the resultant authoritarian rule and subsequent corruption. He talks about the age of the Whole Earth Catalog, the hippies, and communes as a counter-culture response to conservatively driven bureaucracies. He makes a tight parallel between The Whole Earth catalog and its emphasis on functionality to the world of the Internet and the web. He talks about how the Internet harbors groups and forums where people of like minds can gather, as in the days of communes and protest marches.
From the back of the book:
“Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the Whole Earth Catalog, the computer-conferencing system WELL, and, ultimately, Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Turner’s fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.”
Although bogged down by the language for academics, the book is still worth reading, albeit at a slow pace, to instigate new ways of looking at and thinking about our present day Cyberculture as well as, ourselves.