The connection

March 10, 2016 8:15 AM

I'd like to read about the connection between the counter culture/alternative culture in the 60s and the first generation of computer culture. I believe our thinking about computers and the internet contains a lot of DNA from the alternative part of the 60s, but I don't know where I can read about this subject. Your suggestions (preferably links to online material) are welcome!
posted by Termite to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

From Counterculture to Cyberculture was a really good read on exactly this.
posted by hobgadling at 8:23 AM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You want What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, and probably also From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.
posted by nonane at 8:24 AM on March 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

The links above are great. I'd add Steven Levy's book Hackers as another secondary history. As for primary sources... The Whole Earth Catalog (1968), whose community later gave rise to The WELL. Mondo 2000 (1984) which was an explicitly psychedelic/technological mashup magazine and gave rise stylistically to Wired Magazine. And the Homebrew Computer Club (1975) which had a serious hippie ethos and membership.
posted by Nelson at 8:26 AM on March 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Bruce Sterling's excellent book on early hacker culture, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, talks a bit about how the early hacker communities arose out of earlier counterculture movements.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:26 AM on March 10, 2016

The first thing that came to mind was Community Memory, a terminal in a Berkeley record store that was the precursor to the computer BBS. That Wikipedia page leads to the book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, which seems like a perfect resource.

The 60s counterculture also persisted into the 90s and the rise of the internet with the cyberdelic movement.
posted by zsazsa at 8:26 AM on March 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have a whole bibliography about this squirreled away somewhere, but it's about fifteen years old and skews towards scholars on dead trees. However, some of the ideas there are so easy to rehash that I can find similar stuff online in a quick Google search. And, with the following links and search terms, so can you! Learn about Steward Brand (from the Guardian) and then go read the Time article in 1995 that he penned that someone has helpfully manually rekeyed.

And, on preview, you-all type faster than me.
posted by BrunoLatourFanclub at 8:28 AM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I believe Walter Isaacson's book The Innovators touched on this.
posted by bondcliff at 8:33 AM on March 10, 2016

Jesse Jarnow is about to release Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. It promises "the tale of an alternate America and its wide-eyed citizens: the LSD-slinging graffiti writers of Central Park, the Dead-loving AI scientists of Stanford, utopian Whole Earth homesteaders, black market chemists, government-wanted Anonymous hackers, rogue explorers, East Village bluegrass pickers, spiritual seekers, Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs, pranksters, pioneering DJs, and a nation of Deadheads." (emphasis mine) The associated Twitter account @HeadsNews ranges from "on this day" in music history to blotter images to medical studies of psychoactive substances.

Also, I remember reading The Hacker Crackdown around 1998 and it felt dated even then. It will certainly lay some groundwork of what I think you're after. I just think it'll lack some of the 21st Century context you might be after.

I've also just now found myself digging through hyperreal for the first time in ages.
posted by knile at 9:17 AM on March 10, 2016

Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 1974: wonder if I still have my copy?
posted by apartment dweller at 9:22 AM on March 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Let me reiterate the suggestion that you want What the Dormouse Said.
posted by zachlipton at 10:33 AM on March 10, 2016

The Californian Ideology may be appropriate.
posted by migurski at 11:59 AM on March 10, 2016

Response by poster: I knew Metafilter was the right place to ask! Thank you all for your suggestions, and if you have some more reading tips, please keep them coming.
posted by Termite at 2:18 PM on March 10, 2016