Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
using the technology to encourage and facilitate ideas of community
and the free exchange of ideas, through networks.
At the same time, developments in mainstream computer
research were beginning to resemble counter-cultural phenomena.
One such development was the Augmented Knowledge Workshop
held at the
Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco
by Douglas Engelbart and his NLS team with the help of volunteers
such as Stewart Brand (illus.
1968
), which has now achieved legendary
status in Silicon Valley. In an announcement for a conference
celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of this event, the company
responsible breathlessly declared that it was like a 'trippy rock
concert'. In fact given the equipment assembled for the demon-
stration, including twelve CRT displays (illus.
37
), it must have
strongly suggested the multimedia performances then being
pioneered by avant-garde artists and psychedelic groups such as
the Velvet Underground and the Pink Floyd, as well as the light
shows found in 'underground' clubs. When asked, in an interview in
an on-line journal, whether he was surprised that people associated
with the counter-culture suddenly got involved with computers,
Engelbart remarked that he was not, because what he did 'just did
not register with many people in the “ordinary culture”'.
20
Though
ostensibly a conventional engineer and scientist, Engelbart had been
38
37
Whole Earth
founder and
personal
computer
advocate Stewart
Brand and others
backstage at the
1968 Fall Joint
Computer
Conference in
San Francisco, ca
(Brand is in the
foreground with
the cine-camera).
