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Screening
May 22, 2006
One of the strangest stories of the past 50 years - a story that has yet to reach its conclusion - is how two seemingly implacable enemies, the hippie movement and what used to be called the military-industrial complex, found common ground in the personal computer and the internet. For anyone interested in this story, and the many side-stories that spring from it, I'd recommend watching Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet. A reader of this blog sent me a DVD of the film, and I just finished watching it. It's fascinating, enlightening - and creepy. It gave new emphasis to a question that's been troubling me recently: What does it mean to seek liberation through a technology of control?
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Comments
Not really. They're both trying to solve the same problem, but from different perspectives - pragmatic vs. idealistic.
The military deals with many organizational problems. The problem being addressed here was "How do we coordinate scattered units in the event of a strike which might cripple the communications of the chain of command?". That's a perfectly reasonable coordination issue.
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.roughtype.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 23, 2006 11:48 AM
If you like that you'll love Fred Turner's upcoming book which shows how a small cabal of people were behind the hippy bible, the personal computer, online communities and global business. All with footnotes and scholarly references. It's one big conspiracy! Out in September.
Amazon
Posted by: Kevin Kelly at May 23, 2006 03:06 PM
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Nick's next book:
Nick's latest book:
"Future Shock for the web-apps era" -Fast Company
"Ominously prescient" -Kirkus Reviews
"Riveting stuff" -New York Post
Greatest hits
Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians
The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar
Flight of the wingless coffin fly
Other writing
The end of corporate computing
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