Page 42 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

MONOCLE QUARTERLY JOURNAL | DEEP LEARNING
hosting retreats at a mansion in New York that combined psychedelic experiences with meditation, yoga and group therapy sessions. His most famous catchphrase was “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, and through this he urged people to make use of psychedelic drugs to sensitise their brains to the world (turn on), to engage with the new perceptions they could access as a result of these drugs (tune in), and then to question established social norms and authorities (drop out).
Leary’s theory quickly became intertwined with more spiritual and mystical ideas as his patients described their accounts of the life-altering awakenings they had experienced whilst taking LSD. These mystical experiences became central in the pursuit of knowledge across multiple fields, owing to the commonplace use of the drug among university students. The archetypal hippie was not only free-thinking and politically liberal, but often intellectual and highly educated as well. The counterculture movement produced some of the most famous art, literature and music of our time, and it was also the era in which many influential modern civil rights movements gained a foothold. After the Kent State shootings – which left four students dead after a protest against bombings in Cambodia by US military forces – the movement became explicitly political, with protests against the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War spreading general dissatisfaction with the government, and the traditional values it had promoted.
The role of LSD use among the future leaders of Big Tech during the 1960s has also been well-documented in John Markoff’s What the Dormouse Said: How the
of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin.” Like Viktor Frankenstein bringing alchemy and chemistry together to create his monster, so the pioneers of the tech industry have merged the other-worldly imaginings produced
The archetypal hippie
was not only free-thinking and
by LSD with the logic of science in their attempts to create a robot with human-like cognitive abilities. But there is a chilling irony in the fact that these inventors were attempting to replicate the functions of the human brain, whilst physically altering their own. Given what we have recently learnt about the manner in which personal data has been used by Big Tech companies for commercial gain, it could also be argued that, like Viktor Frankenstein, they have been blinded by their ambition, unleashing their creation on the world, imperfect though it is, and with little regard for the damaging impact it may have. And whilst Viktor Frankenstein was something of an anomaly in his time, the mad scientists of our generation wield incredible influence in today’s society.
Timothy Leary re-emerged in the 1980s, describing computers and the internet as “the LSD of the 1990s” and altered his catchphrase to urge people to “turn on, boot up, jack in.” But just as LSD users of the 1960s punted the benefits of the drug with little regard for the damage it could cause, we are not yet fully aware of the implications that our digital LSD could have in the future. Certainly, through the power of smart technologies, we have gained access to a vast amount of information – but this access is worryingly restricted to a select few, monopolised by Big Tech firms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. And it seems that whilst the forerunners of this industry may have once marched for the noble political ideals espoused by the counterculture movement, the legacy they have left is one driven by profits and devoid of an ethical code or a sense of social responsibility. That knowledge is power is a truism that has echoed through history, and it is deeply concerning to realise that those who currently have access to the most knowledge may have sold their souls to acquire it.
politically liberal, but often intellectual and highly
educated as well.
Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2005) and Ryan Grim’s This is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America (2009). Innovators who seem to owe their ideas, at least in part, to LSD include Doug Engelbart (the inventor of the computer mouse), Kevin Herbert (the inventor of virtual reality), and Steve Jobs, who openly claimed that “taking LSD was a profound experience, one
And whilst Viktor Frankenstein was something of an anomaly in
his time, the mad scientists of our generation wield incredible
influence in today’s society.
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