The Counterculture Movement and Computers: Similarities and Corporate Influence

-- By BrendanMulligan - 13 Nov 2009

This essay identifies similarities between the counterculture movement of the 1960’s and 70’s and the development of the computer. It then examines how corporate influence on the hippie movement can inform our understanding of our modern computing systems.

Countercultural Ethos

"We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?" This statement graced the cover of a 1997 edition of Wired magazine, but given the optimism and perhaps naivety embodied in this statement, it could just as likely been said 30 years earlier on some corner in the Haight. A variety of factors influenced the counterculture movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s: resistance to hyper-militarization that fueled the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War, rejection of “technocracy,” and communitarian politics informed by a long anarchist tradition. When lucid, hippie ideology attempted to discard political and cultural orthodoxies, provide for equality, and reject individual ownership and consumerism. In many respects, these values are in consonance with a utopian vision of computers and interconnectedness. Given the similarities, this short essay attempts to probe ways in which the 60’s and 70’s can inform the fight that will define this era: freedom in personal computing.

Peter Coyote said, “If you look at all the political agendas of the 1960s, they basically failed. We didn't end capitalism. We didn't end imperialism. We didn't end racism. Yeah, the war ended. But if you look at the cultural agendas, they all worked.” I think that’s largely correct. Though tangible progress was made in the pursuit of rights, overwhelmingly the lasting legacy of this movement is cultural, and more to the point, commoditized. Organic food, the popularity of VW cars, tie-dies, re-packaged music from every festival imaginable, bickram yoga studios, drugs, Grateful Dead posters to adorn college walls, and to some extent even condoms are commercial products which owe much to this time. The political agenda did not stick, but the culture did because marketers have tapped into the innocence and honesty of the movement. Advertisers harnessed a movement intended—at least in part—to castrate their interests and used it to strengthen capitalism.

Hippie Influence on the Modern Personal Computer

The same thing is happening with the personal computer. In a 1995 Time Magazine article, Stewart Brand, a member of the Merry Pranksters, says: "Forget antiwar protests, Woodstock, even long hair. The real legacy of the sixties generation is the computer revolution." In the late 60’s and early 70’s, computers were corporate and university mainframes, locked in basements and guarded by technicians. By the early 1980s, computers had become desktop tools for individuals, abundant and seemingly empowering. Essentially, Brand argues that hippie programmers applied countercultural ideals such as decentralization and personalization, along with an understanding of information's transformative potential, to build the computer into liberating machinery.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak describes the founding of the company as deeply influenced by countercultural influences, saying he was “surrounded by a lot of the old hippie thinkers from the counterculture movement, basically trying to apply the same internal drives and passions into the use of technology to get us to that better, good world where people were equal and not so subject to the major corporations of the time, having all the power. . . . It was so tied in with empowering the normal low-level people.”

Advertiser Co-option

As Wozniak admits, “That's not where it turned out now, but it's sure where the ideal got us going in that directions,” so what happened to corrupt the movement? The obvious answer is greed. Early entrants to the computer/internet marketplace stumbled upon a goldmine. Everything has its price. Idyllic visions of computers and the internet were sacrificed at the altar of millions and advertisers.

Even taking Brand and Wozniak’s account as true, the remnants of counterculture seen in our modern computing system are not authentic, but the commodification of an appealing ethos. Thomas Frank describes the same business co-option of the countercultural movement in 60’s and 70’s. “Every rock band with a substantial following was immediately honored with a host of imitators; the 1967 'summer of love' was as much a product of lascivious television specials and Life magazine stories as it was an expression of youthful disaffection; Hearst launched a psychedelic magazine in 1968; and even hostility to co-optation had a desperately ‘authentic’ shadow, documented by a famous 1968 print ad for Columbia Records titled ‘But The Man Can't Bust Our Music.’” In response to Coyote’s quote at the beginning of the essay, many of the cultural aspects outlived the substantive aspects of the movement because businesses and advertising forwarded this aspect of the movement.

This is—but should not be—happening again with computers. Hewlitt Packard’s slogan is “the computer is personal again.” Apple targets younger audiences with hip music, trendy colors, and by positioning its product as subverting the market behemoth (Microsoft). Motorola’s new droid advertised open development, but only if you lock yourself to Verizon’s network.

Where Does This Leave Us?

This essay is probably more observational than instructive, but I find it worthwhile to identify the aforementioned similarities. Although there are no easy solutions, perhaps exploitation is not inevitable. Factions of the tech community still remain committed to legitimate communal ideals. For example, the new tenets of the Hacker Ethic remain faithful to the old (“computers can change your life for the better”, “information wants to be free”, mistrust authority, etc.). However, extrapolating from Frank’s study, we should not be optimistic. Frank noted that the bohemian culture’s style transitioned from counterculture to hegemonic. Likewise, tech companies of all ilk have taken an instrument intended to deliver individuals from university and corporate technocrats and used it to monitor these individuals and strengthen corporate control.

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This reminds me of Apple's 1984 commercial -- the computer as political statement rather than just utility.

The free software movement is the real deal. But Apple has captured the counterculture image with advertising. When most people think "geek chic" or "computer counterculture" Apple comes to mind, not Linux. It must be pretty galling to the free software people, who know how closed Apple's system is -- and I'm guessing this is partly why Professor Moglen dislikes Apple so much.

-- GavinSnyder - 30 Nov 2009

"The obvious answer is greed. Early entrants to the computer/internet marketplace stumbled upon a goldmine. Everything has its price."

I think that certain early entrants to the marketplace might have sold out. Others did not. I would be interested to see how this story could include both those who did sell out and those who didn't in both movements and the influence that those idealists continue to make.

-- StevenWu - 30 Nov 2009

Brendan -- I like your observations here, but as I think you recognize in the last paragraph it leaves the reader (or me at least) feeling empty in that you propose no solutions to help combat the problem you identify. Also, I think that one implication of the internet is that spending advertising dollars doesn't get you the huge audience that it used to, and so it might become increasingly difficult to subvert culture through advertising. There is a flip side to this as well: the internet allows groups of like-minded people to stick together and coordinate more easily than in the 60's and 70's, making it harder for the counterculture to be appropriated. I think that these dynamics are important differences that you might address as a counter argument to your thesis, and, if you have the space, as a way of suggesting some hope that history will not repeat itself.

Finally, just to add strength to your argument, consider the new Windows 7 commercials. Microsoft touts the implementation of customer ideas ("Windows 7 was my idea") perhaps in order give consumers a sense of empowerment when dealing with the technology, which is taken away by not allowing customers to implement their own ideas without a license (if its a program) or at all (if they want to modify the OS).

-- JustinColannino - 30 Nov 2009

Thanks for your comments, guys. This is a work in progress and the writing and argument both need refinement, so I appreciate your help in shaping the paper. I will try to edit with your thoughts in mind.

-- BrendanMulligan - 01 Dec 2009