The Hippie-Hacker Revolution

Walter Isaacson sheds light on the counterculture of tech innovators in the ’60s, when computing “went from being dismissed as a tool of bureaucratic control to being embraced as a symbol of individual expression and liberation”:

The person who best embodied and most exuberantly encouraged this connection between tech geeks and the Sixties counterculture was a lanky enthusiast with a toothy smile named Stewart Brand, who popped up like a gangly sprite at the intersection of a variety of fun cultural movements over the course of many decades. “The counterculture’s scorn for centralized authority provided the philosophical foundations of the entire personal-computer revolution,” he recalled in a 1995 Time essay titled “We Owe it All to the Hippies.” As he explained:

Hippie communalism and libertarian politics formed the roots of the modern cyberrevolution…. Most of our generation scorned computers as the embodiment of centralized control. But a tiny contingent — later called “hackers” — embraced computers and set about transforming them into tools of liberation. That turned out to be the true royal road to the future… youthful computer programmers who deliberately led the rest of civilization away from centralized mainframe computers. …

Not surprisingly life on that techno/creative edge led Brand to become one of the early experimenters with LSD. After being introduced to the drug in a pseudo-clinical setting near Stanford in 1962, he became a regular at Ken Kesey’s Merry Prankster gatherings. He also became a photographer-technician-producer at a performance art commune called the US Company, which produced what became known as “happenings.” These involved psychedelic drugs, acid rock music, technological wizardry, strobe lights, multimedia shows, projected images and words, and performances that required audience participation. Occasionally they would be accompanied by talks by Marshall McLuhan or Timothy Leary. A promotional piece on the group noted that it “unites the cults of mysticism and technology as a basis for introspection and communication.” It was a credo that could have been emblazoned on the posters of the personal computer pioneers. Technology was a tool for expression. It expanded the boundaries of creativity and, like drugs and rock, could be rebellious and socially transforming.