Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand,
the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 327 pages.
The author of this book, Fred Turner, is an assistant professor of
communication at Stanford University. Turner's central premise is that
Stewart Brand and his hippie Whole Earth catalogs, and the hacker ethic
of the emerging digital age, are both part of the same seamless, wonderful
technical utopianism that revolutionized the world. For example, the WELL,
an early bulletin-board and email social network, is awarded its own
34-page chapter with 91 end notes. The bibliography in this book lists
500 books and articles. By any standard is much ado about very little.
On that small matter of the "dark side of utopia," Turner devotes a
precious few pages at the end of the book. He comments on Ellen Ullman's
1997 "Close to the Machine," and notes that "the libertarian rhetoric of
self-reliance ... can also permit a deep denial of the moral and material
costs of the long-term shift toward network modes of production and
ubiquitous computing." (page 259) Unfortunately, the author does not
mention Google anywhere, which in 2006 some believed was the ultimate
expression of digital excellence within anti-corporate culture. If he had
investigated Google, Turner might have written more about how technology
does not change human nature, but merely amplifies it.
ISBN 0-226-81741-5
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