It is an important fact of technological history that the outskirts of San Francisco were the national epicenter of both psychedelics and computing. Because of that geographical confluence, young engineers were unusually open to Stewart Brand’s message. That was especially true at Xerox’s famed freewheeling cauldron of creativity, its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). One of the chief engineers there, Alan Kay, ordered every book listed in the Whole Earth Catalog and assembled them in an office library.
