From counterculture to cyberculture

Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism

by

Paperback, 327 pages

English language

Published July 14, 2006 by University of Chicago Press.

ISBN:
978-0-226-81741-5
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OCLC Number:
62533774

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4 stars (1 review)

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.

1 edition

reviewed From counterculture to cyberculture by Fred Turner

Review of 'From counterculture to cyberculture' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I echo the review below that posits this is a relatively sad story. It made me curious to think what the author thinks now over 15 years later and how much computers and the internet have strayed from the countercultural ideologies he accounts for.


Overall I liked the book. It helped me understand cybernetics, a concept I struggled to grasp prior to reading this book. It started to get a bit tedious and ponderous like he was explaining the same things over and over again, I felt like, at times, he could have made the chapters quite a bit shorter. Nonetheless, I do appreciate this book and think it's an important read for people studying the history of computers and the Internet.

Subjects

  • Brand, Stewart.
  • Whole earth catalog.
  • Computers and civilization.
  • Information technology -- History -- 20th century.
  • Counterculture -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
  • Computer networks -- Social aspects.
  • Subculture -- California -- San Francisco -- History -- 20th century.
  • Technology -- Social aspects -- California, Northern.