Rethinking Silicon Valley

During the fall of 2000 I visited the Special Collection room in Green Library at Stanford University, eager to read Stewart Brand's personal journals. I was researching the political and cultural world surrounding three computer science laboratories that were located adjacent to Stanford during the decade during which the technologies that led to the creation of the personal computer industry and the modern Internet emerged. On my initial visit I came away disappointed and it would take almost another two decades before I discovered a missing piece of the puzzle that reframes the early history and impact of Silicon Valley. Although he was not a technologist, Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, is an intriguing figure in the history of the modern computing world and the Valley. He was the author of a seminal article in Rolling Stone magazine, "Space War: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums," which had been the first hint a wider non-technical audience had of the emerging digital world.