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Cyberdelic (from "cyber-" and "psychedelic") was the fusion of cyberculture and the psychedelic subculture that formed a new counterculture in the 1980s and 1990s.
Cyberdelic art was created by calculating fractal objects and representing the results as still images, animations, underground, algorithmic music, or other media.
Cyberdelic rave dance parties featured psychedelic trance music alongside laser light shows, projected images, and artificial fog, while attendees often used club drugs.
Timothy Leary, an advocate of psychedelic drug use who became a cult figure of the hippies in the 1960s, reemerged in the 1980s as a spokesperson of the cyberdelic counterculture, whose adherents called themselves "cyberpunks", and became one of the most philosophical promoters of personal computers (PC), the Internet, and immersive virtual reality. Leary proclaimed that the "PC is the LSD of the 1990s" and admonished bohemians to "turn on, boot up, jack in". [1] [2]
In contrast to some of the hippies of the 1960s who were antiscience and antitechnology, the cyberpunks of the 1980s and 1990s ecstatically embraced technology and the hacker ethic. They believed that high technology (and smart drugs) could help human beings overcome limits, that it could liberate them from authority and even enable them to transcend space, time, and body. They often expressed their ethos and aesthetics through cyberart and reality hacking.
R. U. Sirius, co-founder and original editor-in-chief of Mondo 2000 , became a prominent promoter of the cyberpunk ideology, whose adherents were pioneers in the IT industry of Silicon Valley and the West Coast of the United States. [2]
In 1992, Billy Idol became influenced by the cyberdelic subculture and the cyberpunk fiction genre. The result of his passion for the ideals behind the culture resulted in his 1993 concept album, Cyberpunk , which Idol hoped would introduce Idol's fans and other musicians to the opportunities presented by digital technology and cyberculture. [3] Timothy Leary and other members of the cyberdelic movement were contacted by Idol, and participated in the album's creation. [4] The album was a critical and financial failure, and polarized online cyberculture communities of the period. Detractors viewed it as an act of co-optation and opportunistic commercialization. It was also seen as part of a process that saw the overuse of the term "cyberpunk" until the word lost meaning. [5] [6] Alternatively, supporters saw Idol's efforts as harmless and well-intentioned, and were encouraged by his new interest in cyberculture. [7] [8]
After the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s burst in 2000, the techno-utopianism that prevailed in the cyberdelic counterculture waned while technorealism grew. Most cyberpunks realized that the PC, the Internet, and other new technologies did not really bring the radical social, political, and personal changes they thought they would, specifically the "cybersociety" - a postpolitical, non-hierarchical society made possible by cyberware, in which the computer-literate, super-intelligent, open-minded, change-oriented, self-reliant, irreverent free-thinker is the norm and the person who is not internetted and does not think for themself and does not question authority is the "problem person". [2]
Disillusioned, R. U. Sirius condemned cyberdelic escapism:
[...] Anybody who doesn't believe that we're trapped hasn't taken a good look around. We're trapped in a sort of mutating multinational corporate oligarchy that's not about to go away. We're trapped by the limitations of our species. We're trapped in time. At the same time identity, politics, and ethics have long turned liquid. [...] Cyberculture (a meme that I'm at least partly responsible for generating, incidentally) has emerged as a gleeful apologist for this kill-the-poor trajectory of the Republican revolution. You find it all over Wired ["the Rolling Stone of technology"] - this mix of chaos theory and biological modeling that is somehow interpreted as scientific proof of the need to devolve and decentralize the social welfare state while also deregulating and empowering the powerful, autocratic, multinational corporations. You've basically got the breakdown of nation states into global economies simultaneously with the atomization of individuals or their balkanization into disconnected sub-groups, because digital technology conflates space while decentralizing communication and attention. The result is a clear playing field for a mutating corporate oligarchy, which is what we have. I mean, people think it's really liberating because the old industrial ruling class has been liquefied and it's possible for young players to amass extraordinary instant dynasties. But it's savage and inhuman. Maybe the wired elite think that's hip. But then don't go around crying about crime in the streets or pretending to be concerned with ethics. [2]
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, governments, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging. As a social experience, individuals can interact, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, direct actions, create artistic media, play games, engage in political discussion, and so on, using this global network. Cyberspace users are sometimes referred to as cybernauts.
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed the culture of hippie music, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, and free-love throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as New York City.
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", and writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested 36 times. President Richard Nixon described him as "the most dangerous man in America".
Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet.
R. U. Sirius is an American writer, editor, talk show host, musician and cyberculture celebrity. He is best known as co-founder of Mondo 2000 magazine and its original editor-in-chief from 1989 to 1993.
Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It covered cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine.
Psychedelic art is art, graphics or visual displays related to or inspired by psychedelic experiences and hallucinations known to follow the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. The word "psychedelic" means "mind manifesting". By that definition, all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic".
Future Culture, also known as FUTUREC or "FC" is a mailing list founded in 1992, that is concerned with online and internet culture. It currently resides on listserv.uark.edu.
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an organization of drug users and distributors that operated from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s in Orange County, California. They were dubbed the Hippie Mafia by the police. They produced and distributed drugs in hopes of starting a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States.
Brummbaer was a German digital artist who has done work as an art director, designer, graphic artist, and 3D modeler. As an actor, he has appeared in various German TV movies, and also produced and directed. In the latter part of his career he became focused on computer graphics, created several short computer-generated animations and made visual effects for movies.
Kevin Maloof, better known by his pseudonym, Gareth Branwyn, is a writer, editor, and media critic.
Cyberpunk is the fifth studio album by English rock musician Billy Idol, released on 29 June 1993 by Chrysalis Records. A concept album, it was inspired by his personal interest in technology and his first attempts to use computers in the creation of his music. Idol based the album on the cyberdelic subculture of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Heavily experimental in its style, the album was an attempt to take control of the creative process in the production of his albums, while simultaneously introducing Idol's fans and other musicians to the opportunities presented by digital media.
Encyclopaedia Psychedelica International was an independent London-based magazine in the late 1980s that mixed a return to hippie values combined with new emerging technology, at a time when to call someone a 'Hippie' was considered an insult. This publication may be considered a rallying point for those who were looking for a greater degree of spirituality-based themes in everyday life, and simultaneously a call to action for the early cyberpunk community in the UK and beyond. It was a stepping stone towards the group's public event production activities, which included a rave called Evolution in 1990, and the Megatripolis nightclub, which was a regular club night attended by David Bowie and other counterculture personalities of the era.
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967, Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". It was also the title of his spoken word album recorded in 1966. On this lengthy album, Leary can be heard speaking in a monotone soft voice on his views about the world and humanity, describing nature, Indian symbols, "the meaning of inner life", the LSD experience, peace, and many other issues.
The following is a list of works by Timothy Leary. The majority of Leary's works were put into the public domain by his estate in 2009.
Wetware is a term drawn from the computer-related idea of hardware or software, but applied to biological life forms.
Douglas Mark Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open-source solutions to social problems.
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America is a 2016 non-fiction book by rock journalist Jesse Jarnow. The book describes American psychedelics counterculture in the second half of the twentieth century.
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