From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Published:6th Jun '08
£17.00
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
In "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award - winning "Whole Earth Catalog", the computer-conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.While tracing the extraordinary transformation of how our networked culture came to be, Turner's fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.
"[Turner] postulates that Brand was an idealistic (albeit Barnumesque) leader of a merry band of cybernetic pranksters who framed the concept of computers and the Internet with a seemingly nonintuitive twist: These one-time engines of government and big business had transmogrified into a social force associated with egalitarianism, personal empowerment, and the nurturing cocoon of community." - Steven Levy, Bookforum "A revealing new book.... [Turner] is rigorous in his argument... and impressive in his range." - Edward Rothstein, New York Times "Turner's fascinating From Counterculture to Cyberculture... focuses on a key player whose role was making the counterculture-cyberculture connection: Stewart Brand.... There are a myriad of fascinating little historical details that [Turner] dug up that will surprise and enlighten even the key players in the drama." - Henry Lieberman, Science"
ISBN: 9780226817422
Dimensions: 24mm x 15mm x 2mm
Weight: 539g
354 pages