Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
2people
2015–2022years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Well he attended UC Berkeley in the 1970s, so it’s safe to assume that he has had lots of exposure to hippie culture.
There are actually quite strong connections between computer nerds and the counterculture of the 60s/70s. If you’re curious I recommend the following books:
# What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry / John Markoff. A great book with many fascinating characters.
# From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism / Fred Turner. Also an interesting read, but much less accessible than Markoff’s book.
# The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage / Clifford Stoll. Very good book, reads like a detective novel in a Berkeley setting.
PS. More psychedelic shirt goodness this way: https://www.google.com/search?q=larry+wall&tbm=isch
- This video memorializes a conversation between John Markoff and Paul Saffo at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, March 24, 2022. John's biography of Stewart Brand, Whole Earth, has just been released. See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/technology/stewart-brand-... for a teaser chapter. Amazon or your local independent bookstore for a copy of the real thing.
Whole Earth is more that a biography (unusual because it is a biography of a living person), more than a paean to the Whole Earth Catalog, more than a memoir of the 1960s and 1970s, more than the history of a photograph of the whole earth. John captures the essence of Stewart Brand the catalytic personality who initiated and encouraged many of the best things that emerged from the counterculture. The image that comes to mind it that of a bee flying from flower to flower, pollinating and then flying on.
Full disclosure: These folks are my friends. I was there in the 1960s and 1970s. I shopped at the Truck Store. I ran the People's Computer Company.
- One title that I really look forward to reading is John Markoff’s new book: Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.
Due for release in 02022-03-22. (See what I did there?)
It ought to be an interesting read.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554161/whole-earth-...
