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Jacobin Radio

Dig: Counterculture to Cyberculture with Fred Turner

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2021

⏱️ 125 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How the 60s counterculture went on to make the techno-utopian ideology that suffuses our techno-dystopian reality. Dan interviews Fred Turner on his classic From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com

0:05.6

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0:12.8

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0:20.2

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0:26.8

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0:34.4

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0:41.2

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0:52.8

Out now from verso books.

1:04.2

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine.

1:08.0

My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

1:14.0

Why do people think about technology and computers the way that they do?

1:18.4

That is the puzzle that Fred Turner answers in his classic book from counter-culture to cyber-culture,

1:24.8

Stuart Brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism.

1:30.4

Turner writes, quote,

1:32.4

for the marchers of the free speech movement as for so many other Americans throughout the 1960s,

1:39.4

computers loomed as technologies of dehumanization,

1:43.2

of centralized bureaucracy, and the rationalization of social life,

1:49.2

and ultimately of the Vietnam War.

1:53.2

Two decades after the end of the Vietnam War and the fading of the American counter-culture,

1:58.8

computers somehow seemed poised to bring to life the counter-cultural dream of empowered individualism,

2:06.4

collaborative community, and spiritual communion.

2:11.2

We have come to take all these meanings, at least until recently,

...

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