From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Turner, Fred.

Contributor:

GIC Course Text Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Media Studies.

Local Subjects:

Media Studies.

Summary:

In From Counterculture to Cyberculture Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco 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.

Contents:

1 The Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor 11

2 Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture 41

3 The Whole Earth Catalog as Information Technology 69

4 Taking the Whole Earth Digital 103

5 Virtuality and Community on the WELL 141

6 Networking the New Economy 175

7 Wired 207

8 The Triumph of the Network Mode 237.

ISBN:

9780226817422

0226817423