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In the 1950s and 1960s, the centers of mainframe computing research in the U.S. were to be found in the headquarters of IBM in upstate New York and in the academic labs of nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, a relatively compact region of California between San Jose and San Francisco became a crucible not only for political protests and a thriving counterculture but also a new set of computing paradigms that would deeply influence the technical Roszak, Theodore world.¹⁸Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement

A seminal text in the communication of counterculture values was Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture (1969), which criticized the dominant industrialized cultures of Europe and America and suggested new ideals for disaffected citizens, students, and intellectuals.¹⁹ Roszak rejected what he called Technocracy technocracy in modern societies, the oppressive regimes of corporate and technological expertise that seemingly dominated society and regimented social and intellectual life. His work echoed themes from other works of the period, including C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite (1956), Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden (1964), Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society (1964), and Lewis Mumford’s The Myth of the Machine (1967). Technology had its merits, these texts argued, but in the era of cold wars, nuclear weapons, and the expanding military-industrial complex, technology could also become a force of dehumanization. To reject this mindset required a transformation of consciousness, a mode of transcendence stimulated by new types of knowledge and collaborative styles of living.

If this social and political protest seems like a rejection of the mainframe computing culture that we have just surveyed, it was—at least in part. Countercultural intellectuals came to view most of the scientists who worked on government and military projects as Big Brother loving bureaucrats who were supporting the wrong team. The fact that many of the employees who worked on these projects also had concerns about the ethics of the military-industrial complex was beside the point, at least for a while.

In his description of the counterculture movement, Fred Turner has identified two groups that envisioned the transformation of consciousness as the essential task for healing American society in the 1960s. The first group withdrew from society and formed egalitarian communes in places like northern California, Colorado, and New Mexico. These communes could be in rural or urban areas, but they were unified in their rejection of middle-class, Cold War America and its presumed values. The second group focused on mind-expanding experiences including sexuality, psychedelic drugs, music, and alternative spiritualties. Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement These countercultural experimenters often remained in society but developed a similar utopian outlook to those who choose to live in the communes.²⁰

Figure 2.4Spectators at the New Games in 1973 watch as Stewart Brand, a leader of the counterculture movement, lays out sticks for a group activity. Brand became fascinated with the collective use of small-scale tools.Brand, Stewart (Photo by ©Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Collectively, Turner labels the two groups New Communalists New Communalists, and he draws attention to their unique interests in small-scale tools and technologies. Unlike many in the New Left—the political activists who rejected computers along with bombs, weapons, and other symbols of the military-industrial complex—the New Communalists found a role for tools in their worldview, especially if the tools could be used to disentangle corporate America from the military and their perceived stranglehold on society.

Foremost among Bay Area New Communalists was Stewart Brand (1938– ), a charismatic writer and publisher who became an unofficial spokesman for the counterculture movement in the 1960s and 1970s. (See Figure 2.4.) Brand’s comprehensive publication, Whole Earth Catalog The Whole Earth Catalog, proposed to offer small-scale Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement tools to those who would transform consciousness and society, either through self-sustaining communes or individual expressions of love, learning, and harmony. The first Whole Earth Catalog Whole Earth Catalog, published in Menlo Park in 1968, outlined its mission through a short statement on the first page:

The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting.

An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:

1.Useful as a tool,

2.Relevant to independent education,

3.High quality or low cost,

4.Not already common knowledge,

5.Easily available by mail.

This information is continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff.²¹

This preface, explaining the importance of “tools” and how they were selected, appears in each published edition. The compendium appeared every 3 months or so, changing its focus with the seasons. Between 1968 and 1972, almost two million copies of Whole Earth Catalog were sold, and each edition contained new essays, tools, and reviews. The central organizing categories in the catalog included “Understanding Whole Systems,” “Land Use,” “Shelter,” “Industry,” “Craft,” “Community,” “Nomadics,” “Communications,” and “Learning.” Within each category there were listings of mail order products, book reviews, scientific texts, photo-graphs, and short articles from contemporary figures such as Buckminster Fuller, Wendell Berry, Marshall McLuhan, and Timothy Leary. The catalog was essentially a utopian mail-order directory stocked with materials that would inspire hippies and communalists to raise their consciousness, live peacefully, and make the world a better place.

The Whole Earth Catalog became the bible of sorts for countercultural groups like the New Communalists. While paging through several volumes of the oversized catalog in preparation for Code Nation, I was struck by the optimism and excitement of the movement, which grew to attract over 750,000 people and more than 10,000 Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement communes across the U.S.²² In the space of an afternoon, a typical reader is able to learn something about growing crops, caring for farm animals, building basic structures, weaving cloth, generating power, preserving food, managing waste, providing for health care (including home births), keeping bees, building furniture, throwing pottery, establishing communal baths, meditating, and experimenting with mind-altering drugs. Providing essential tips for DIY communal living was the catalog’s main purpose. All the book and merchandise reviews were positive, too. Discouraging product reviews were not printed as they supposedly transmitted “negative energy.”

Figure 2.5Cover of the Whole Earth Catalog (Fall 1970).Whole Earth Catalog (Courtesy of Getty Images, Glenn Smith, contributor)

In terms of computing technology, the Whole Earth Catalog is surprisingly taciturn on electronics, computers, and software. Stewart Brand scholars tend to regard The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971) as the definitive Whole Earth text because it offers the widest range of content, enjoyed the best sales, and was the winner Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement of a national book award. Despite its comprehensive coverage, however, the 1971 Whole Earth Catalog Last Whole Earth Catalog features no computers, terminals, calculators, or software programs, nor do the editors write at any length about the burgeoning realms of computer technology. Only in earlier volumes, such as the March 1969 Supplement to the catalog, can one find an occasional reference to computer-related technology, such as a photograph of a computer club meeting or a short advertisement for a calculator.

This might seem surprising, considering my earlier emphasis on the “crisis” mentality of the computer industry and the flurry of activity around the software engineering conference at Garmisch. But the reality was that the computer world was still in its infancy, a topic for government analysts and specialists in research labs. Most Americans had no direct experience with computers. At best, they caught glimpses of hulking mainframe units in films, television shows, and news broadcasts.

As in most things, Stewart Brand was a bit ahead of the curve. In December 1968, Brand had assisted Bay Area inventor Doug Engelbart at the so-called “Mother of All Demos” exhibition “Mother of All Demos” exhibition in San Francisco, demonstrating creative uses for computer terminals and the future of input devices and GUIs. But this moment aside, there were limits to what regular people knew about computers. Sophisticated electronics were especially rare in the rural communes or humble row houses that sheltered Whole Earth Catalog readers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was also a huge cultural gap between corporate computing and the average work experience of Americans. All of this explains why the only mention of computers in The Last Whole Earth Catalog is a textbook about how to create computer graphics from Prentice Hall, and a review of Nicholas Negroponte’s new book on computer-aided design and human-computer interaction.²³ About the Negroponte book, Brand simply offered the quip in his publisher reviewer notes: “A book of beginning efforts to domesticate computers. Good intro to life with dumb-fuck genius machines.”²⁴

Brand and the editors of Whole Earth Catalog often included short notes like this about the products that they list. Negroponte’s book was clearly innovative (he would go on to have an important career in computing), but Brand’s note also passes along a common stereotype about electronic devices in this era—they appeared both stupid and smart at the same time. In other words, computers offered both control and freedom to users. Like the human soul, they required some measure of domestication and familiarity before transcendence might occur. Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement

The Whole Earth Catalog Whole Earth Catalog was not an engineering manual. However, it spoke in metaphorical rhythms about small-scale tools that might elevate America’s consciousness. The editors offered a compelling ideology: that low-cost instruments that would soon return human communities to pre-industrial simplicity. Through the process, they would gradually raise group awareness. The counterculture movement had different priorities than high technology advocates, but the movement’s ideas about tools were provocative and they left a lasting impression.