
How the ’60s Counterculture Is Still Driving the Tech Revolution - adampludwig
http://techonomy.com/2013/11/60s-counterculture-still-driving-todays-tech-revolution/
======
dasil003
> _“Wikipedia is written by a whole bunch of people who don’t know what
> they’re talking about. But it turns out that collectively, a bunch of people
> who don’t know what they’re talking about know more than one person who
> spent their lifetime researching it.”_

This immediately brought to mind this article: [http://jsomers.net/blog/it-
turns-out](http://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out). I mean it vividly popped
into my brain because of the utter nonsense of this claim.

It doesn't _turn out_ that an army of ignorants knows more than an expert.
What _turns out_ is that free trumps paid, and (perhaps surprisingly) can
muster an enormous army of manpower, which in turn leads to a
comprehensiveness that is unattainable by a traditional monetary business
model. I mean you don't need to look very far to find factual inaccuracies and
indeed slander on Wikipedia that can not be fixed because the rules are not
oriented towards truth. So to draw the vacuous conclusion that Wikipedia won
because its articles were _better_ than Britannica belies a sort of willful
ignorance about how the world works.

That's not say doing an end run around overly comfortable gatekeepers isn't a
good thing in general, but man what a braindead quote.

~~~
reverius42
There's a lot of evidence that Wikipedia's articles are actually better than
Britannica:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Compar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Comparative_studies)

~~~
jmyc
Britannica articles aren't written by "one person who spent their lifetime
researching" that topic.

~~~
memracom
Actually, they often are. But Wikipedia articles are written by dozens or even
hundreds of people who spent a significant part of their lives researching the
topic. Individually none of those people can match that Britannica expert's
experience, but collectively they dwarf him.

~~~
_delirium
Britannica's expert model also risks some pretty biased and incomplete
articles, depending on the expert chosen. There's a _relationship_ between
being prominent in a field and being willing and able to write a
comprehensive, neutral overview of the field, but it's not quite the same
thing, and some top researchers are very bad at the latter.

------
GuiA
The intersection of tech culture (and notably Silicon Valley) and 60s
counterculture is a fascinating topic.

The best book on the subject is, in my opinion, "What the Dormouse Said" by
John Markoff [0]. It's a fantastic book, although it requires the reader to
already have some knowledge of the people and historical events, as it is not
meant to be a computer history primer.

But yeah, it's a great book, and a lot of stuff in there might surprise some
readers. For instance, I learned that there was LSD research happening a few
blocks away from where I used to live in Menlo Park :)

Timothy Leary also has an interesting essay in Laurel's "Art of Human Computer
Interface Design" anthology[1] about what he believes are the intersections of
computing as a human tool and psychedelics.

When you start to look into it, you'll realize that the tech industry and
California's friendly attitude towards psychedelics have always somewhat gone
hand in hand- and people who are not familiar with California's atypical
culture might be surprised to know that some of the engineers and designers
behind their favorite products share a few things in common with the ol'
Timothy.

Queue the necessary: "There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-
Pers...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-
Personal/dp/0143036769)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-
Desig...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-
Design/dp/0201517973)

~~~
pm90
Were any of the creators/contributors to BSD UNIX acid-trippers? Honest
question

~~~
jasomill
Given the number of contributors[1], it's hard for me to imagine the answer
being "no".

[1] [http://www.netbsd.org/people/CSRG-
contrib.html](http://www.netbsd.org/people/CSRG-contrib.html)

------
jamesmiller5

      "...'Is the bottom getting out of poverty?' Going from
      next-to-nothing to twice that is so much huger than going
      from being a one-billionaire to a two-billionaire," Brand
      said. And, thanks to the sharing and social revolution,
      "that’s going on like mad now."
    

I can't subscribe that this notion is happening. Really, I think the opposite
is happening. With the evaporation of the middle class in the USA and personal
anecdotal experiences I think the above statement is false. If there is any
evidence or arguments to support the claim that the social revolution is
decreasing poverty I'd really be interested in hearing them.

To that, I'd also like the to see sources and arguments that the crowds are
truly wiser than an expert.

~~~
VladRussian2
> the crowds are truly wiser than an expert.

it depends on whose opinion one asks - crowd's or an expert's :)

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VLM
I don't think the editor who picked the title actually read the article.

"Indeed, he noted, his maxim applies as well to mankind’s Biblical first act
of insubordination in the Garden of Eden as it does to the 1960s
counterculture that was the progenitor of the personal computer."

A better title would take into effect something like one dude says all
innovation requires disrespect (LOL) and if thats the case are social media
startups sufficiently insubordinate to be disrespectful enough to be our only
source of modern innovation. Or something like that. Its a long complicated
argument (and mostly wrong) so its going to be difficult to create a short
linkbait headline.

For something that covers so many distinct topics, its pretty well written.

------
droob
I have yet to see a Wikipedia article that's better written than a traditional
encyclopedia entry. You can praise Wikipedia for the breadth of its knowledge,
certainly, but the depth?

~~~
Bootvis
That very much depends on the subject, for instance popular culture is covered
very well on Wikipedia with little delay.

