The countercultural movements of the sixties and seventies fostered a generation of utopian dreamers and reformers who shared a longing for a new society liberated from the hierarchical structures that dominated the cold war era. But who would have predicted that the internet, a product of the very military-industrial complex against which they rebelled, would assume a major role in those utopian visions?

Charting the rich intersection between the worlds of counterculture and cyberculture is the topic of Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Edward Rothstein’s “Connections” column in today’s New York Times shows how Turner traces a common desire for nonhierarchical communities from the romantic ideals of long-haired hippies, to modern “peer-to-peer, collaborative societies, interlinked by invisible currents of energy and information.”

“Fred Turner points out in his revealing new book …,” says Rothstein, “there is no way to separate cyberculture from counterculture; indeed, cyberculture grew from its predecessor’s compost. Mr. Turner suggests that Stewart Brand, who created the Whole Earth Catalog, was the major node in a network of countercultural speculators, promoters, inventors and entrepreneurs who helped change the world in ways quite different from . . .

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