User:Menno Harder/CtoC

From Counterculture to Cyberculture // Taking the Whole Earth Digital *Fred Turner*
In 1995 Stewart Brand wrote an article in a special issue of Time magazine entitled "Welcome to Cyberspace"
According to this article, the PC revolution and Internet had grown directly out of the counterculture.
In the article it was argued that the real legacy of the sixties generation was this computer revolution. According to Brand, Bay area computer programmers shared ideals with the counterculture: decentralisation and personalisation. With these idea's a new kind of machine was built. Late 60's and early 70s computer had mostly been mainframes, locked away by instances, guarded by technicians. But, by early 80s computers had become tools for the individual. They were machines ready to use for improving your own life. The 1970's were the decade of the personal computers, and the Bay area programmers did play a big part in this. Especially the 1984 Apple Macintosh was specifically marketed as a machine for personal use.

The technical developments that improved the efficiency and power of a computer in the 50s, resulting in much smaller computer for example did not necessary made computing more personal. Before early 1970s small computers used for individuals would mini- micro- or desktop computers. The notion that computers could empower individuals and transform their social world had to be linked to the machines themselves. Thierry Bardini suggested that since the 40s computers and their users have progressively become more individualised.Paul Ceruzzi claims that the personal computer started when the public could get direct access to computers. Others argue that it came forth out of a countercultural group of hobbyists, completely outside the computer industry but having their own ideas and values about what computer should be or become.

What the Dormouse said: How 60s Counterculture Shaped the PC Industry *John Markoff*

In his book 'What the Dormouse said' Markoff writes that there was no technological straight line to the creation of the personal computer. Personal computers came at a time when all the old rules were questioned. Other media such as books, records, movies, radios and television could all be encompassed within this new technology. Computers designed for the individual would emerge within groups of people rejecting authority and believing in triumphing corporate technology instead of being subject to it. There was a big difference with West Coast computing and East Coast, the East Coast computing culture "just didn't get it". Machines intend for corporate departments and laboratories widely underestimated the power of the PC. Stanford University is named, the various electronic companies that came forth out of it (Varian, Ampex, Hewelett-Packard) and the counterculture that grew on the Mid-peninsula.

"Although demonized today, LSD was a defining force in a cultural war. Many Californians, among them honor students and leading professional have used the drug in a most 'serious' manner, to gain glimpses of new and rich worlds of consciousness".

The 1960's have transformed everyone who lived through it, especially true for the many computer scientists, entrepreneurs and hackers who worked during this time. The generation was certain that it would change the world. For some of Silicon's Valley's most influential figures, the link between the counterculture and the PC can't be forgotten. Markoff interviews Steve Jobs about iTunes and he shows him the iTunes music visualizer (dancing colourful patterns), whereas Steve Jobs responds this reminds him of his youth. It is widely known that Steve Jobs was strongly tied to the countercultural psychedelic movement and that his roots often left him feeling like an outsider in the corporate world he was now the leader of. There are now two groups within the computing industry. One one side it is giant software champions that believe software is to be bought, sold, and guarded. The other camp are lot's and lot's of computer programmers who have formed an open-source movement, committed to the idea that information should be free and shared software will be increasingly more powerful. This is affecting the entire digital world. Consumer electronics, recording and motion picture industries.

"Information sharing is the digital-age equivalent of the threat communism posed to developing industrialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries".

When societal benefits are weighed against those of private interests, the consequences of allowing information to be shared without restrictions is nuanced. An example is given by naming the transistor, a piece of technology created by a large corporate company (AT&T Bell Laboratories), was forced to license it's invention freely under the terms of an antitrust settlement with the Justice Department. The Silicon Valley's on existence relied on the free license of the transistor. The idea of sharing information by the hacker lies nested within the personal computer itself.