raw · articles · ingested 2026-05-14
From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Ch. 4 — Fred Turner (U Chicago Press, 2006)
Source: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/817415_chap4.html
Fred Turner, University of Chicago Press, 2006. Sample chapter.
Key passages mentioning archive figures
Steve Baer and Engelbart’s visit
“As members of the ARC group became more intrigued by the burgeoning commune movement, Brand helped bring the two communities together. Steve Durkee, of USCO and the Lama Foundation, began to visit the ARC offices. Doug Engelbart and Bill English later traveled to New Mexico and the Libre commune, where they met with Steve Baer, the Whole Earth Catalog’s foremost authority on geodesic domes.”
Peradam event (fall 1969) — Zomeworks among participants
“In the fall of 1969, Dave Evans, a member of the ARC group, staged a three-day event called Peradam in the woods near Santa Barbara, in which he brought together technologists and members of the New Communalist movement. Participants represented research institutes such as SRI and the Ecology Center and countercultural organizations such as Zomeworks (builders of domes), Portola, and the Hog Farm commune.”
Chapter summary (from fetch)
Fred Turner’s chapter traces how Stewart Brand bridged countercultural communities and computer research institutions in the Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Turner identifies three phases:
- 1968–1972: community mingling around Menlo Park (WEC, ARC/SRI, commune movement)
- Mid-1970s: Brand’s focus on cybernetics and space colonies
- Early 1980s: Brand’s repositioning of computer engineers as New Communalist heirs
The Whole Earth Catalog functioned as conceptual bridge. Xerox PARC researcher Alan Kay discovered it in 1969: “The same way it should be easier to do your own composting, you should have the ability to deal with complicated ideas by making models of them on the computer.”
Brand’s 1972 Rolling Stone article “Spacewar” depicted Defense Department-funded researchers as countercultural pioneers.
Key people (from chapter)
- Stewart Brand — WEC founder; intentional broker between ARC and counterculture
- Doug Engelbart — ARC director; NLS system (1968 demo); traveled to NM to meet Baer
- Bill English — ARC group; co-traveled with Engelbart to Libre commune
- Steve Durkee — USCO artist, Lama Foundation; visited ARC offices; co-coined “zome” with Baer
- Dave Evans — ARC member; organized Peradam gathering (fall 1969, Santa Barbara)
- Alan Kay — Xerox PARC researcher; directly influenced by WEC
Key organizations / events
- ARC (Augmentation Research Center) — Stanford Research Institute; Engelbart’s lab; developed mouse, NLS
- Peradam — Three-day gathering, fall 1969, woods near Santa Barbara; ARC + commune movement; Zomeworks participated
- Libre commune — New Mexico commune; where Engelbart and English met Baer
- Portola Institute — Menlo Park; published WEC; countercultural organization at Peradam
- Hog Farm — Commune; Peradam participant
Turner’s framing
Turner uses “New Communalism” as his term for the back-to-land / commune movement (distinct from the New Left). He argues the counterculture-computing convergence was not incidental but brokered — Brand as the key mediator. Zomeworks is positioned in Turner’s account as a countercultural organization (not an engineering company), consistent with the archive’s own picture of Baer’s milieu in 1969.