Synopsis of Wise Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The computer counter-culture

This chapter discusses the emergence of multimedia as a result of counter-culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Counter-culture has two aspects: one is political (suggesting that cheap computer power could bring democracy) and the other is cultural (suggesting "global village").

In the 1960s when big business and the state controlled people, the counter-culture group thought that technology could empower the individual to take on the state and big business; in other words, they could liberate people. Then some computer activists developed Resource One, which was one of the very few public computer centers in the US. The Community Memory Project (CMP) was also carried out to build an electronic public space where people could gather their memories.

However, computers were too difficult for the public to use. So the only way to popularize computer was to develop a user-friendly graphical interface. The technicians tried to make computers "a communication tool as well as a calculating tool." In this way, a computer with a mouse, a high-resolution screen, and a keyboard has the capability to show graphics and other audio-visual elements, and to allow users to interact with it.

Virtual reality and cyberspace made use of more advanced technology to bring people to the computer world. They helped bring science fiction and psychedelic computer, and also the New Age movement.

Computers and multimedia are so pervasive that they influenced the human world and the culture. Although they are only media , they are message too. As Marshall McLuhan stated, "Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments."