Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the counter-culture
At about the same time as engineers in Silicon Valley were devel-
oping the technology that would miniaturize, and thereby revo-
lutionize, computing, San Francisco, roughly
kilometres to the
north, was becoming a centre of the so-called counter-culture. This
was one of a number of reactions to the sweeping economic and
social changes whose impact had been felt at a global level, particu-
larly in the United States, France, Italy and Britain. The combination
of high employment resulting from post-war economic prosperity,
and the coming of age of the 'baby boom' generation born in the
1940
80
s, meant that young people wielded an unprecedented
degree of economic and, by extension, cultural power. The late '
s and
1950
50
s
and early '
s had seen the rise of 'youth culture', to begin with a
largely manufactured phenomenon, designed to capitalize on the
burgeoning economic power of the young through encouraging
the consumption of pop music, fashion and other desirable items.
But as the '
60
s progressed, youth culture had invested some,
at least, with a broader sense of the kinds of power and influence
young people might wield. This coincided with the increasing visi-
bility of problems and antagonisms that had been largely occluded
by the consensual nature of post-war society, but which could now
no longer be ignored or contained, such as atomic and nuclear
weaponry, the United States' military adventurism in Vietnam, the
continuing issue of race and racial discrimination in developed
countries, and the growing understanding of the disastrous ecolo-
gical effects of industry and technology. A dominant perception was
that such issues were the result of the mismanagement of previous
generations.
Thus the late
50
s and '
60
s saw the development of movements opposed
to the previous generation's ways of thinking and acting. These
took a number of different forms. In France, for example, the Spring
of
1960
1968
saw wholesale political turmoil, as students and others
