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From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
by
Fred Turner
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...more
Paperback, 354 pages
Published
May 15th 2008
by University Of Chicago Press
(first published September 2006)
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If you ever listen to people with advanced degrees in English, you'll hear things like "narrative context", "semiotics", and "the rhetoric of making a difference." For the most part, it's all crap. This book is written by a guy with an advanced degree in English, yet it is completely readable and shows how things like narrative context can lose the scare quotes and actually be important to the way our world develops.
That said, you should have a strong interest in either the counterculture moveme...more
That said, you should have a strong interest in either the counterculture moveme...more
Overall, I appreciated what this book had to offer. It connects us with how the internet, although originally designed as a tool for the military to respond to a nuclear attack, it was interpreted by the counter culture movement as a potential tool to unite society.
Stewart Brand, child of the Pentagon, godfather of the the Whole Earth world view, dispassionate account by Stanford professor, or how the digital utopia was designed to exclude most.
Nov 11, 2008
Chuck
added it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
1960s,
contemporary-radical-movements
This well-written, well-researched book was disappointing to me. Stewart Brand clearly forged important links between the counterculturalism of the 1960s and the libertarian, cyber networks of our time, but Turner fails to make a case for his lasting importance or to demonstrate that our contemporary digital culture would have been significantly different if Brand had never existed. Was Brand a cause or an effect of larger social processes? Turner doesn’t say. Instead, he just chronicle’s Brand’...more
A must read for anyone who is wanted to know how we got to where we are with the Internet.
Centred on the good ole USA.
This is an important book about the culture that existed during the early years of the PC revolution and the creation of the Internet. The focus is on Stewart Brand and his circle, but it branches out a bit to consider the ideas of Norbert Wiener and other theorists. I found the prose to be a bit windy, but the overall message is sound and there is nothing else out there that really addresses these issues in a serious way.
A bit dull, but well worth reading. It's one of those books that really helps clarify where we are and how we got here. It answers a question that I hadn't thought to ask: How did the culture of computing become so closely allied with a self-contradictory mix of anti-authoritarian politics and communitarian ethos, after being identified with the military and large corporations in the 1950s and 1960s?
I really wanted this book to be better but it just wasn't there. Author writes like a doctoral student and it was a hard book to finish. Very dry which was surprising given the subject. Contained some great anecdotes but overall was very repetitive. A good biography of Stewart Brand would have been much more effective.
Fascinating reading. Recommended
From Counterculture to Cyberculture theorizes that a group of long-bearded; LSD travelers; free lover hippies are the pre-history of the current culture that underlies all those pads; texting and sort of individualistic devices that lead our society to be what it is right now.
Compelling, scholarly analysis of the influence of the West Coast communalist movement of the late 60s/ early 70s on the development of 1990s cyber-optimism. Nearly biographical account specifically of Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Catalog / WELL.
Feb 24, 2010
Mike Violano
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
business-economics
Good bio of Stewart Brand, his band of followers, and the left coast movement that made the Whole Earth catalog and is Wired. A bit dry but worth the trip.
Lackawanna: 303.4833 TURNER Valley Community Library Stacks
Author: Turner, Fred
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
ISBN: 0226817415
Author: Turner, Fred
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
ISBN: 0226817415
Again - elizabeth got this for free at work, sounded interesting - if anyone knows anything about it let me know
Dec 04, 2007
John
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
super-geek hippies
Almost five years ago, I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. Today, I can't remember anything in particular that made the book stand out. Read once and recycle.
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Associate Professor
Department of Communication
Stanford University
Director of Stanford’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society
More about Fred Turner...
Department of Communication
Stanford University
Director of Stanford’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society
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Jul 02, 2012 04:13am