E-Book Overview
In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place. <em>From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the <em>Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning <em>Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful <em>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. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this 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.
E-Book Content
From Counterculture to Cyberculture
From
Counterculture to Cyberculture Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Fred Turner The University of Chicago Press
/
Chicago and London
Fred Turner is assistant professor of communication at Stanford University. He is the author of Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2006 by Fred Turner All rights reserved. Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-81741-5 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-81741-5 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Turner, Fred. From counterculture to cyberculture : Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism / Fred Turner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-81741-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Computers and civilization. 2. Brand, Stewart. 3. Information technology—History—20th century. 4. Counterculture—United States— History—20th century. 5. Computer networks—Social aspects. 6. Subculture— California—San Francisco—History—20th century. 7. Technology—Social aspects— California, Northern. 8. Whole earth catalog. I. Title: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism. II. Title. QA76.9.C66T875 2006 303.4833 — dc22 2005034149 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
vii
The Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture The Whole Earth Catalog as Information Technology Taking the Whole Earth Digital Virtuality and Community on the WELL Networking the New Economy Wired The Triumph of the Network Mode Notes 263 Bibliography Index 313
11 41 69 103 141 175 207 237
291
Illustrations follow page 140.
[ v ]
Acknowledgment