Cyberculture icon R.U. Sirius conducted a lengthy interview with Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.
R.U. Sirius was the co-founder and founding editor of the cyberculture magazine eventually known as Mondo 2000, which carved out the geeky-but-glossy publishing space later exploited more successfully (in financial terms at least) by Wired. The activities of R.U. Sirius are not limited, however, to writing and editing: he has also recorded with an art-rock band and run for the presidency of the United States.
The Sirius interview with Turner is titled “How Stewart Brand Took Us From Counterculture to Cyberculture” and ranges over Brand, cybernetics, the Whole Earth Catalog, the Global Business Network, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, and the links between the new communalist, back-to-the-land movement of the ’60s and ’70s and the technoculture of the ’90s and beyond.
Also, we have two excerpts from Turner’s book. You can read the introduction and an excerpt from chapter four about the Whole Earth Catalog and the emergence of digital culture.
Update November 21: R.U. Sirius has a posting about Fred Turner’s book and an edited transcript of his interview with Turner over on 10 Zen Monkeys.