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

Shifting computational metaphors

With the introduction of WWW the talk of revolution filled the air. With the arrival of ubiquitous networked computing scholars, pundits and investors saw in it the potential of an ideal society decentralized, egalitarian, harmonious and free.

In the 1960s computers represented technologies of dehumanization, centralized bureaucracy, rationalization of social life and the vietnam war instead. But in the 90's the computer symbolized the opposite of that and seemed to be able to enact the countercultural dream of empowered individualism, collaborative community and spiritual communion.

In one way this shift is technical, in the 60's computers where gigantic and only in the hands of governments and corporations. In the 90s they where smaller, in possession of individuals and much more powerful than the big computers of back then. They became communication devices, interlinked by telephone networks.

However the reason for computers to become 'personal' technologies with utopian visions attached to them are not technical. Since there is nothing intrinsically about a computer or computer network for it to empower and liberate individuals, flatten hierarchies, establish communities etc.

So where do utopian notions on computers come from? An influential group of SF Bay Area journalists and entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Network. Between 60's and 90's they connected Silicon Valley and the counterculture. Leading to the Whole Earth Catalog, The Well and later the establishment of Wired.

military, industry, hippie

It's an intertwining of two cultures, the military-industrial research culture and the American counterculture. Scholars and popular accounts see the 40's and 50's as a grey, dull, cold war era. The 60's and 70's as colorful, with lots of personal exploration and political protest. Both aimed at bringing down Cold War era military industrial bureaucracy. The persistence of military-industrial complex, plus growth of corporate capitalism and consumerism today is then explained by saying that the once authentic ideas of the counterculture where co-opted by capitalism.

However this narrative obscures the fact that the post WW2 military-industrial research that produced both the nuclear bomb and the computer also gave rise to free-wheeling, interdisciplinary and highly entrepreneurial style of working. In interdisciplinary collaborations they broke down the walls of bureaucracies and embraced both computers and cybernetics. In the cybernetic view institutions became living organisms, social networks became webs of information and the gathering and interpreting of information as key to understand both technical, natural and social worlds.

In the 60's substantial parts of the counterculture shared this view. They became interested in small scale technologies for personal and social transformation. The same technologies that where the output of the mil-ind research culture. They began to read Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller and Marshall Mcluhan. For the generation that grew up in the shadow of nuclear holocaust, the cybernetic vision of the world contained a glimpse of hope because it contained the possibility of global harmony.

the seed of neo-liberal politics in the counterculture

For Steward Brand and the Whole Earth Group cybernetics presented them with a set of social and rhetorical sources for entrepreneurship. Brand migrated from one intellectual community to the next, bringing into contact the worlds of scientific research, hippie homesteading ecology and consumer culture. One of these places where intellectual communities would meet is in the pages of the WEC, where scientific articles would be next to hippie letters and ads for technology. Together the contributors to the WEC synthesized an understanding of technology as a countercultural force that would shape public understanding of computing and technology long after the 60's.

After the WEC came the WELL and Wired in the 90's that redefined the computer als a personal machine, computer networks as virtual communities and cyberspace as the digital equivalent of back-to-the-land land of the 60's.

The members of the WEC, WELL and Wired became visible and credible spokesmen for their ideas. They became respected journalists by reporting on the communities they where building. The belonged to networks where leaders from politics and business and former counterculturists met. As the members of these communities got into Congress, the boards of major corporations and the World Economic Forum they propagated the idea of the New Economy. According to which the rapid integration of telecommunications and computing into international economic life, together with large corporate layoffs and restructuring gave rise to a new economic era.

Individuals could no longer count on the support of their employers, but would have to become flexible entrepreneurs moving from place to place, building and updating their knowledge and skills in constant self-education. Government would have to pull back and deregulate the technology that was allowing for all these changes, and business in general.

To the Wired people the public Internet seemed both the infrastructure and the symbol for the New Economy. In the pages of Wired former counterculturalists, corporate executives and right-wing politicians where coming together.

Unlikely allies

The Whole Earth Network turn towards technology, consciousness and entrepreneurship as principles for a new society found fertile ground with the Republicans of the 90's. They shared the affection for empowering technologically enabled elites, building new businesses and rejecting traditional forms of governance. As the right-wing politicians and corporate execs rose to power they benefited from the hip credibility of people like Steward Brand and Steve Jobs.

As a result of Brand's entrepreneurial tactics and large diverse networks the popular association between (networks of) computers and the egalitarian social ideals of the counterculture have become important features in the networked mode of living, working and deploying of social and cultural power.