Wilson.fm

In the late 1960s, the ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ brought the cutting edge of emerging computer tech together with the consciousness-expanding tools of hippie movement in a mail-order publication that defined a generation. Fred Turner is an expert on the early days of Silicon Valley who traces the impact of the hippie mindset right up to the apps we use today.

Claire L. Evans is a technology writer and musician who published an incredible book last year called Broad Band, which focuses on the overlooked women who created some of the web’s most influential tools and communities. She talks about people like Stacy Horn, who maintained one of the first-ever social networks, Cathy Marshall, an originator of hypertext, and Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the “operator” of the early internet for decades.

Much of the DNA of today’s multimedia art comes out of the Experiments in Art in Technology program, a 1960s collaboration series between conceptual artists and free-thinking engineers at Bell Labs. E.A.T. included chaotic performances and repurposed brand-new tech like sonar and infrared cameras, leaving a legacy of playful tinkering that inspires new media artists today.

A systems design engineer and an English literature scholar, Wendy Chun is uniquely talented at breaking down our metaphors for and relationships with our technologies. Here she talks about what networked devices are doing to our habits, communities, and media.

Danah Boyd has been studying social networks for more than a decade and she directs the Data & Society Institute, a home for incredibly timely research into the ways the internet and culture influence each other. Here she joins Douglas Rushkoff to talk about agency, addiction, and why we can’t just let the internet give us what we want.

Episode starts around 12:40, skip to that from the player.