The hippy movement, which is inextricably intertwined with the use of psychedelics (prominently LSD), has often been misrepresented as a time of pure hedonism and rebellion. In fact, it was one of the most transformational time periods we’ve ever experienced.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the San Francisco Bay Area became a hub of cultural change. By 1967, many young people involved in the hippy movement had based themselves in the formerly working-class neighbourhood of Haight-Ashbury. That summer, between 75,000 and 100,000 young Americans travelled to Haight-Ashbury to protest the Vietnam War, the capitalist way of life, and to experiment with drugs and sexuality.
At this time, the anti-establishment, countercultural movement viewed early computers with suspicion. Military contractors and academic institutions were largely responsible for the production of the large, room-sized mainframes of early computing. They were seen as tools for the government, which were designed to centralise top-down control. However, it was this exact suspicion and rejection of societal norms which fostered the environment in which technology and psychedelics began to align.
Psychedelic experiences were the catalysts for the anti-authoritarian ethos. They simultaneously promote feelings of connection with the wider world and individual empowerment. Tech pioneers embedded in this counterculture began to project these values into developing new technologies.
University of Washington professor William Rorabaugh explained this idea in his book, American Hippies:
Engineers used psychedelics to think outside the box and produce novel ideas and solutions. This birthed an entirely new philosophy of design. Software and hardware were no longer stale adjuncts to corporate efficiency; they could be instruments of liberation and individual freedom. This laid the foundation for the personal computing revolution.
The Whole Earth Catalog
If there is a single individual who embodies this melding of technology and psychedelia, it is Stewart Brand. He was not just around at the birth of the personal computer; he was “the one who put "personal" and "computer" together in the same sentence and introduced the concept to the world.”
Brand recognised the parallels between psychedelics and emerging technologies early on. They were (and are) tools which are capable of expanding human consciousness and decentralising power.
He was known to be involved with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and is in fact included on page two of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, driving the Pranksters' pick-up truck:
The fact that he is even included is quite a feat, as Fred Turner, associate professor of communication at Stanford University, explained in an interview with The Guardian:
The same year Tom Wolfe’s book was published, Brand was also present at “what came to be known as ‘the mother of all demos’ when the world first saw what computers can do.” Not only was he present, but he was in fact operating the camera and consulting on the presentation itself. (We’ll come onto the specifics of what “the mother of all demos” involved momentarily.)
Brand’s presence in both worlds, technological and countercultural, allowed him to transfer the values and ideas of the hippy movement into the language of the growing tech industry. The fundamental belief that information should be freely available to all rather than just a military or academic elite was paramount. He and his contemporaries posited that the boundary-dissolving experience of substances like LSD mirrored the emerging field of cybernetics.
Cybernetics is the study of how systems communicate, process information, and regulate themselves. This basically amounts to the understanding that humans, machines and the environment are constantly exchanging information back and forth, wholly interconnected. The LSD experience provides a visceral, biological experience of this dissolving of the boundaries between the self and the external world. Brand believed that computers could make this interconnected reality tangible and practically useful.
The culmination of this burgeoning philosophy was the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. This was a publication which functioned as an encyclopedia of sorts. A directory of tools, books, and resources to assist people in developing sustainable, self-sufficient communities. You could see it as somewhat of an analogue equivalent to the modern search engine.
The opening line of the first edition of the Whole Earth Catalog perfectly captures this sense of newfound individual agency: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
Brand’s ideas evolved with the counterculture, and the ideas of the Whole Earth Catalog directly inspired the creation of The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) in 1985. They describe themselves as: “the primordial ooze where the online community movement was born”. It was, in fact, the space in which the writer and critic Howard Rheingold coined the term “virtual community”.
This pioneering online community meant individuals from a myriad of disciplines could communicate easily without geographical constraints. It is spaces such as this that provided the foundational structure of the modern internet.
Augmenting Human Intellect
While Stuart Brand was bridging the gap between the counterculture and digital networks, a revolution in human-computer interaction was also taking place. At the Stanford Research Institute, Doug Engelbart and his team were attempting to use technology to fundamentally augment human potential. Engelbart was hoping to “multiply the power of collaborators, not just automate services or business processes”. To do so, he and his team looked beyond what might be considered traditional engineering to explore the cognitive potential of psychedelics.
From 1961 to 1965, the International Foundation for Advanced Study undertook a series of experiments involving LSD. Over 350 people, including Engelbart and a number of other prominent figures in the development of these new technologies.
Engelbart explained the personal impact of these experiments on his thinking, detailing a particular epiphany in an interview in a 2004 Wired article, “The Click Heard Around The World”:
Engelbart and his team would go on to develop “many of the fundamental features of modern computing…years before their commercialization and widespread use.”
On December 8, 1968, Engelbart revealed these innovations to the wider scientific community. He described the demo as “a gamble…if it flopped, we would have been in deep trouble.”
Harnessing the countercultural spirit he was enmeshed within (and the future Silicon Valley ethos), he was “using research funding…without official permission.”
This was what became known as “the mother of all demos”, which we touched on in the previous section.
You can still see the footage (filmed by Stuart Brand) in full on YouTube.
During a 90-minute presentation, Engelbart would reveal innovations such as:
- The graphical user interface (GUI)
- Hypertext links (as seen in all the links in this article)
- Collaborative, real-time editing of shared documents
For the first time, the computer was not simply a complex calculator; it was an interactive tool capable of navigating vast amounts of interconnected information. The conceptual leap from inserting physical punchcards into room-sized systems to a virtual environment of windows and clickable links was a paradigm shift in engineering. While it may not be stated in the technical manuals, the influence of the psychedelic movement on this gigantic leap forward cannot be understated. The boundary-dissolving nature of the psychedelic experience was translated into functional hardware and software. This was the true birth of personal computing.
Steve Jobs and Apple
Perhaps the most widely known intersection of psychedelics and technology belongs to Steve Jobs. The controversial co-founder of Apple was very open about his experiences with mind-altering substances. He famously said that “taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he’d ever done.” This was not a casual remark; it was an admission of just how much the psychedelic state had altered his thinking, going as far as to say that “there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics…could never understand.”
During the 1970s, Jobs was heavily immersed in the countercultural movement in California. He even travelled to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. This shifted his perspective, as with other prominent figures we have discussed already, away from the rigid, linear thinking of the corporate technology sector. Jobs believed that, in a similar way to psychedelics, technology could expand human consciousness. These were tools for personal empowerment and expanded creative potential. Rather than producing more capable data processing machines.
This drastic shift in perspective had a profound impact on the aesthetics of future Apple products. Psychedelics can enhance our appreciation of the beauty and form of objects and the environment around us. Jobs took this and ran with it. Computers were not beige industrial things; they could be beautiful in both form and function. He demanded that even the internals of the machines Apple produced should be equally focused on elegance and precision. The user interface was designed to feel organic and welcoming. This was an environment to inhabit and a space which felt natural to navigate and explore. Essentially, what he attempted to do was to translate the natural fluidity of the psychedelic experience into consumer products.
Jobs’ nonlinear thinking and involvement in the counterculture and fringe beliefs, as well as an unerring ability to see beyond current technical constraints, culminated in the iPhone. A TIME article succinctly sums up the powerful parallels between this world-changing device and psychedelic experience:
While the reality is, of course, much more nuanced and murky than this, it does illustrate the intensely interconnected environment and increasingly psychedelic reality that we inhabit.
The Homebrew Computer Club
This powerful sense of connection did not begin in the corporate boardroom. Long before Apple became a global behemoth, Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak were both members of somewhat of an underground grassroots movement. This was what became known as “The Homebrew Computer Club”, whose members first gathered in March, 1975.
“In true electronics-hobbyist fashion, the inaugural meeting took place in a residential garage.” Early hobbyists would come together to dismantle the boundaries of technology, bringing the psychedelic philosophy of interconnectedness to this rapidly changing space.
The Homebrew Computer Club was founded by Gordon French, an engineer and former weapons designer, and Fred Moore, a radical Berkley intellectual who had previously been involved with Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. The club was less of a technology company and more like a 1960s commune in its arrangement. Their entire ethos was to move the development of computing away from large institutions and into the hands of the public. This was the birth of Open-source software (OSS).
Open-source software is computer software that is made publicly available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute, not locked behind patents and corporate licenses. This is the embodiment of the communal roots of this way of thinking, which grew out of the psychedelic counterculture. Wozniak details how Apple products were shaped by this environment:
It is perhaps a shame then that from these rebellious roots, Apple inevitably slid into corporatism and monopoly. This goes some way to explaining the acrimonious split of the founders. This early push to democratise technology was driven by people who wanted to dismantle these very same monopolies, just as they wanted to do so with their own minds.
The Modern Renaissance
While the counterculture may have faded into the past, Silicon Valley’s interest in psychedelic substances has far from abated. In fact, the modern psychedelic renaissance has brought about a resurgence of interest. However, the approach has altered significantly. Microdoses for increased productivity have replaced the mind-expanding mega doses of old. The desire is not to shatter the ego and build a new world, but rather to perform more effectively within the industry as it is. Those homebrew hobbyists would likely look at this with a degree of disappointment, regardless of their enduring influence upon the structure of the space as a whole.
The Financial Times has explored the microdosing phenomenon, revealing that a growing number of professionals are regularly taking roughly a tenth of a standard recreational dose of LSD to support their work. While the science is severely lacking as to the effectiveness of this practice, it is increasingly common. Users report multiple beneficial effects, such as:
- Heightened focus
- Elevated mood
- Improved lateral thinking ability
This is very much a productivity hack as opposed to any kind of mystical journey. Capitalism subsumes psychedelia, if you will.
While the cultural context has shifted, the fundamental appeal of psychedelics within the tech world is still there. The human brain and its capabilities are what drive innovation. Substances which have profound impacts on the ways we can think (regardless of the efficacy of microdosing in particular) will likely always be harnessed by those striving for nonlinear solutions to problems.
Final Thoughts
The symbiosis between the psychedelic counterculture and early computing has undoubtedly changed the world. What began as a radical movement to expand consciousness and dissolve rigid societal structures has provided much of the philosophical blueprint for the modern era. Interconnectedness, individual empowerment, and decentralised access to information have shaped first the personal computer and then the internet.
Pioneers in the field – Engelbart, Brand, Jobs, and Wozniak – recognised that technology and psychedelics can be complementary tools. Tools which can augment human intellect and liberate the mind. Their originality and willingness to step outside the existing engineering paradigms of their era birthed systems much more akin to the natural world. Fluid, intuitive, and all collaborative and community-driven. The graphical user interface, open-source software, and the very concept of a networked global community were all inspired by psychedelics.
While the actual implementation of psychedelics themselves into the industry is no longer about dismantling corporate culture, their legacy is impossible to deny. The devices which we use daily to communicate, create, and navigate the world actively dissolve these boundaries, regardless of how strenuously their manufacturers may try to exert control.
The biggest technological advancements are not necessarily just bigger, faster, and more efficient. They are a fundamental reimagining of what it means to be human in an interconnected world.