From Counterculture to Cyberculture From Counterculture to Cyberculture Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism Fred Turner The University of Chicago Press / Chicago and London Fred Turner is assistant professor of communication at Stanford University. He is the author of Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2006 by Fred Turner All rights reserved. Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America 15141312111009080706 12345 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-81741-5 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-81741-5 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Turner, Fred. From counterculture to cyberculture : Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism / Fred Turner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-81741-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Computers and civilization. 2. Brand, Stewart. 3. Information technology—History—20th century. 4. Counterculture—United States— History—20th century. 5. Computer networks—Social aspects. 6. Subculture— California—San Francisco—History—20th century. 7. Technology—Social aspects— California, Northern. 8. Whole earth catalog. I. Title: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism. II. Title. QA76.9.C66T875 2006 303.48Ј33 —dc22 2005034149 ᭺ϱ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. The Shifting Politics of the Computational Metaphor 11 2. Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture 41 3. The Whole Earth Catalog as Information Technology 69 4. Taking the Whole Earth Digital 103 5. Virtuality and Community on the WELL 141 6. Networking the New Economy 175 7. Wired 207 8. The Triumph of the Network Mode 237 Notes 263 Bibliography 291 Index 313 Illustrations follow page 140. [v] Acknowledgments If I’ve learned anything in the last seven years, it’s that ideas live less in the minds of individuals than in the interactions of communities. The ideas in this book are no exception: they owe their origin to a far-flung network of extraordinarily generous teachers, colleagues, friends, and interviewees, to all of whom I’m very grateful. I first began thinking about the Whole Earth network and the politics of information technology while I was a PhD student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. My professors there offered me an ideal mix of direction and freedom. They consistently demanded that I reach across disciplinary boundaries, pursue difficult questions, and find my own voice on the page.Asmyearlyinterestsgelledintoadissertation,ProfessorsMichael Schudson, Robert Horwitz, Chandra Mukerji, Geoffrey Bowker, Lev Manovich, Philip Agre, and Steven Epstein each introduced me to new literatures, read multiple drafts of chapters, and patiently helped me frame my fascination with the Whole Earth Catalog in analytical terms. Together, they offered me a model of what a life devoted to engaged, public-minded scholarship and committed teaching could be. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students—Lonny Brooks, Cyn- thia Chris, Carol Christopher, Tarleton Gillespie, Mary Gray, Steve Jackson, Sujeong Kim, Barbara Osborn, Mauro Porto, Matt Ratto, and Jennifer Rayman—for their encouragement and friendship. Three years into my work at UCSD, I moved to Boston and began teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. MIT is the kind of place where you can be hired to play in one intellectual sandbox and suddenly find yourself jumping into others; fortunately, that’s what happened to me. There I had the [ vii ] [ viii ] Acknowledgments incredible luck to find three new teachers: Professors JoAnne Yates, Pablo Boczkowski, and Joe Dumit. They introduced me to much of the literature in the fields of organizational sociology and science and technology studies that informs this book. Sloan also allowed me to teach with a highly experi- enced and delightful group of colleagues, including Lori Breslow, Neal Hartman, Leigh Hafrey, and Melissa Raffoni, all of whom made coming to work a treat. At the same time, I found my way to MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program, where Professors Henry Jenkins, William Uricchio, and David Thorburn taught me a great deal about the dynamics of digital media and contemporary culture. So did three graduate students with whom I worked: David Spitz, Anita Chan, and Zhan Li. I also want to thank Catherine Friedman, then head of MIT’s Dewey Library, and her staff for going to exceptional lengths to keep my office bookshelves well stocked. Since 2003 I have been happily housed in the Department of Communi- cation at Stanford University. Writing this book at Stanford has been a de- light for a number of reasons. For one, many of the events I have written about took place within shouting distance of my office. Thus I have been al- lowed to enjoy one of the peculiar pleasures of those who study the past: the chance to walk through a landscape and in the same moment to see it as it is and imagine it as it used to be. But more than that, I am grateful to my col- leaguesinthedepartment.JeremyBailenson,JimBettinger,HenryBreitrose, Jim Fishkin, Dawn Garcia, Ted Glasser, Shanto Iyengar, Jan Krawitz, Jon Krosnick, Marion Lewenstein, Marcyliena Morgan, Cliff Nass, Byron Reeves, Don Roberts, Kris Samuelson, and Bill Woo have all shared the kind of in- sights and offered the kind of support that make writing a book possible. The department’s administrative and technical staff have been unfailingly helpful as well. I would like to thank Susie Ementon, Joan Ferguson, Michael Forte, Joyce Ichinose, Barbara Kataoka, Kathleen Magner, Mark Urbanek, and Mark DeZutti for all their hard work on this project’s behalf. And I would like to thank two undergraduate research assistants, Adam Maenhout and Joel Lewenstein, for their unstinting hustle. Outside the department, I have enjoyed the support of faculty and staff from around the university. Steve Barley, co-director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, and Woody Powell, professor of edu- cation and director of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Re- search, have both pushed me to rethink the relationship between media technologies and organizations. Both have also given me rich opportunities to test my ideas within their respective research groups. Professors Scott Bukatman of the Art Department, Michael Shanks of Classics, and Tim Lenoir of History (now at Duke), together with the graduate students and Acknowledgments [ ix ] visitors of the Critical Studies in New Media Seminar, have kept me focused on thinking about the ways that emerging media may shape the future. Without the staff of the Stanford University libraries, this book could not have been written. Under the leadership of University Librarian Michael Keller, the library has collected not only the archives of the Whole Earth Catalog and the personal papers of Stewart Brand, but also a whole host of records covering the past fifty years of technological and cultural change in the region. Henry Lowood, curator of science and technology at the library, has generously guided me through these materials, as have Alex Pang, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, and Sean Quimby. Chris Bourg and Glen Worthey have continued to point me to new digital resources, while Roberto Trujillo, Polly Armstrong, Margaret Kimball, Christy Smith, Peter Whidden, and the whole staff of the Special Collections Department have bent over backward to help me work with previously unexamined archival materials. Over the past two years, as the book began to take shape, I have had the op- portunity to think it through out loud with several engaged and congenial groups. I would particularly like to thank Jennifer Light and the faculty and students of Northwestern University’s Department of Communication Stud- ies, and AnnaLee Saxenian, Nancy Van House, and the University of Califor- nia, Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems for allowing me to present my work in progress and for making it better with their com- ments. For the same reasons, I am also grateful to David Silver, Adrienne Massanari, and the Ford Foundation for organizing the miniconference “Critical Cyberculture Studies” at the University of Washington, and to Geoffrey Bowker, the Social Science Research Council, and Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society for convening the two-day session “Digital Cultural Institutions and the Future of Access.” I also thank fellow panelists and audiences at the annual meetings of the Associa- tion of Internet Researchers, the International Communication Association, the Society for the History of Technology, and the Society for Social Studies of Science, all of whom offered valuable feedback on my work. Once the manuscript had solidified, a small group of colleagues and friends bore down on it, challenged my arguments, and made it a much stronger book than it otherwise would have been. I’m especially grateful to Hsiao-Yun Chu, Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, Roy Rosenzweig, Jonathan Sterne, and the anonymous readers for the University of Chicago Press for their rigor and care, and to my agent, Geri Thoma, and my editor, Doug Mitchell, for their steady encouragement and warmth. Perhaps the people