[TUHS] Were all of you.. Hippies?

[jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens)]

Speaking of Licklider, here is an amazingly prophetic video from 1972

https://youtu.be/GjZ7ktIlSM0



On March 21, 2017 6:17:59 AM GMT+08:00, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>    > From: Steffen Nurpmeso
>
>    > This "We owe it all to the Hippies"
>
>Well, yes and no. Read "Hackers". There wasn't a tremendous overlap
>between
>the set of 'nerds' (specifically, computer nerds) and 'hippies',
>especially in
>the early days. Not that the two groups were ideologically opposed, or
>incompatible, or anything like that. Just totally different.
>
>Later on, of course, there were quite a few hackers who were also
>'hippies',
>to some greater or lesser degree - more from hackers taking on the
>hippie
>vibe, than the other way around, I reckon. (I think that to be a true
>computer
>nerd, you have to start down that road pretty early on, and with a
>pretty
>severe commitment - so I don't think a _lot_ of hippied turned into
>hackers.
>Although I guess the same thing, about starting early, is true of
>really
>serious musicians.)
>
>   > "The real legacy of the 60s generation is the Computer Revolution"
>
>Well, there is something to that (and I think others have made this
>observation). The hippie mentality had a lot of influence on everyone
>in that
>generation - including the computer nerds/hackers. Now, the hackers may
>have
>had a larger, impact, long-term, than the hippies did - but in some
>sense a
>lot of hippie ideals are reflected in the stuff a lot of hackers built:
>today's computer revolution can be seen as hippie idealism filtered
>through
>computer nerds...
>
>But remember things like this, from the dust-jacket of the biography of
>Prof. Licklider:
>
>"More than a decade will pass before personal computers emerge from the
> garages of Silicon Valley, and a full thirty years before the Internet
> explosion of the 1990s. The word computer still has an ominous tone,
>conjuring up the image of a huge, intimidating device hidden away in an
>over-lit, air-conditioned basement, relentlessly processing punch cards
>for
>some large institution: _them_. Yet, sitting in a nondescript office in
>McNamara's Pentagon, a quiet ... civilian is already planning the
>revolution
> that will change forever the way computers are perceived. Somehow, the
>occupant of that office ... has seen a future in which computers will
>empower
>individuals, instead of forcing them into rigid conformity. He is
>almost
> alone in his conviction that computers can become not just super-fast
>calculating machines, but joyful machines: tools that will serve as new
>media
>of expression, inspirations to creativity, and gateways to a vast world
>of
> online information.
>
>Now, technically Lick wasn't a hippie (he was, after all, 40 years old
>in
>1965), and he sure didn't have a lot of hippie-like attributes - but he
>was,
>in some ways, an ideological close relative of some hippies.
>
>	Noel

-- 
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