Kyle Harrison
to-read
From Counterculture to Cyberculture
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
- Author
- Fred Turner
- Published
- 2006
- Pages
- 327
- Recommended
- 3 times
Why it’s on the list: Turner’s account of how the Bay Area communes and the Whole Earth network became the cultural template for networked computing — and of Stewart Brand as the broker who moved people and ideas between worlds that were not supposed to talk.
Where I heard about it
- Replies to Sarah Guo — named in the answers to her question “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” (March 2025). The whole recovered list is on Is There a Book… (tweet).
- Saved to the reading list again in February 2023.
As captured (February 22nd, 2023):
- From Counterculture to Cyberculture” by Fred Turner
- On Patrick Collison’s Bookshelf — Patrick Collison’s catalog of the physical books he owns (unflagged). Saved in Kyle’s April 19th, 2020 Roam daily note.
Connections
- Stewart Brand — the connective figure the book is organised around.
- Silicon Valley — the culture whose origins the book is arguing about.
- Historical Futurism — the portfolio idea this sits under.