In his nonfiction book ‘From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism’, American professor Fred Turner chronicles how the counterculture tenets of communal living, collaboration, and utopianism play a major role in the evolution of digital technology, particularly in the 1990s with the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web. According to Turner, one of the driving forces behind this evolution is Stewart Brand, a leader in the communal living movement who went on to found a number of influential organizations and publications.

Thanks to the influence of men like Stewart Brand, the Internet took on qualities of openness, collaboration, and utopianism generally associated with the counterculture.

The WELL became one of the earliest online communities, serving as a forerunner for online message boards and the social networks of today.

“Before long, computer technology and the Internet fell into the hands of private profit-seeking corporations like Microsoft whose intentions and methods were often suspect. Still, the legacy of Brand and the counterculture continued to persist in certain corners of the Internet. That legacy is particularly evident in Wikipedia, the free, user-maintained online encyclopedia hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation.”

Excerpt from a plot summary by the editorial team of SuperSummary about the book ‘From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism’, Fred Turner, The University of Chicago Press, 02006.