Timothy Leary
PERSONAL COMPUTERS / PERSONAL FREEDOM
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Once upon a time, knowledge-information was stored in
extremely expensive mainframe systems called Illuminated Volumes,
usually Bibles, carefully guarded in the palace of the Duke or
Bishop and accessible only to security-cleared, socially
alienated hackers called Monks. Then in 1456 Johann Gutenberg
invented a most important piece of hardware: the movable-type
printing press. This knowledge-information processing system
could mass-produce inexpensive, portable software readily
available for home use. The Personal Book.
Until recently, computers were in much the same
sociopolitical situation as the pre-Gutenberg systems. The
mainframe knowledge-processors that ran society were the monopoly
of governments and large corporations. They were carefully
guarded by priestly technicians with security clearances. The
average person, suddenly thrust into electronic illiteracy and
digital helplessness, was understandably threatened.
THE MAINFRAME MONOPOLY
My first contact with computers came in 1950, when I was
director of a Kaiser Foundation psychological research project
that developed mathematical profiles for the interpersonal
assessment of personality. In line with the principles of
humanistic psychology, the aim of this research was to free
persons from dependency upon doctors, professionals, institutions
and diagnostic-thematic interpretations. To this end, we
elicited clusters of yes-no responses from subjects and fed back
knowledge in the form of profiles and indices to the patients
themselves.
Relying on binary information rather than thematic
interpretation, our research was ideally suited to computer
analysis. Routinely we sent stacks of data to the Kaiser
Foundation's computer room, where mysterious technicians
converted our numbers into relevant indices. Computers were thus
helpful, but distant and unapproachable. I distrusted the main-
frames because I saw them as devices that would merely increase
the dependence of individuals upon experts.
In 1960 I became director of the Harvard Psychedelic Drug
Research Program. The aims of this project were also humanistic:
to teach individuals how to self-administer psychoactive drugs in
order to free their psyches without reliance upon doctors or
institutions. Again we used mainframes to index responses to
questionnaires about drug experiences, but I saw no way for this
awesome knowledge power to be put in the hands of individuals. I
know now that our research with psychedelic drugs and, in fact,
the drug culture itself was a forecast of or preparation for the
personal computer age. Indeed, it was a brilliant LSD
researcher, John Lilly, who in 1972 wrote the seminal monograph
on the brain as knowledge-information processing system:
"Programming and Meta-Programming in the Human Bio-Computer."
Psychedelic drugs expose one to the raw experience of brain
function, with the protections of the mind temporarily suspended.
We are talking here about the tremendous acceleration of images,
the crumbling of analogic perceptions into vapor trails of neuron
off/on flashes, the multiplication of mind programs slipping in
and out of awareness like floppy disks.
The seven million Americans who experienced the awesome
potentialities of the brain via LSD certainly paved the way for
the computer society. It is no accident that the term "LSD" was
used twice in "Time" magazine's cover story about Steve Jobs.
For it was Jobs and his fellow Gutenberger, Steven Wozniak, who
hooked up the personal brain with the personal computer and thus
made possible a new culture.
HANDS ON/TUNE IN
The development of the personal computer was a step of
Gutenberg magnitude. Just as the Personal Book transformed human
society from the muscular-feudal to the mechanical-industrial,
sohas the personal electronic knowledge processor equipped the
individual to survive and evolve in the age of information. To
guide us in this confusing and scary transition, it is most
useful to look back and see what happened during the Gutenberg
mutation. Religion was the unifying force that held feudal
society together. It was natural, therefore, that the first
personal books would be Bibles. When the religion market was
satiated, many entrepreneurs wondered what other conceivable use
could be made of this new-fangled software. How-to-read books
were the next phase. Then came game books. It is amusing to
note that the second book printed in the English language was on
chess--a game that became, with its knights and bishops and kings
and queens, the Pac-Man of late feeudalism. We can see this same
pattern repeating during the current transition. Since
money/business is the unifying force of the industrial age, the
first Wozniak bibles were, naturally enough, accounting
spreadsheets. Then came word processors. And games.
The history of human evolution is the record of
technological innovation. Expensive machinery requiring large
group efforts for operation generally becomes a tool of social
repression by the state. The tower clock. The galley ship. The
cannon. The tank. Instruments that can be owned and operated by
individuals inevitably produce democratic revolutions. The
bronze dagger. The crossbow. The pocket watch. The automobile
as self-mover. This is the liberating "hands-on" concept. Power
to the people means personal technology available to the
individual.
In viewing the home computer movement, I am often reminded
of a homely parable from America's cultural past. Some three-
score years ago, the most popular soft drink in the land was
derived from coca leaves and cola nuts. A magnificent ritual
accompanied the distribution of this sparkling energizer. Place:
the soda fountain. Mainframe technology: a large, gleaming
steel tank filled with syrup and connected to a stainless-steel
pipe from which bubbled phosphorus water. A white-coated priest
pulled the handle, and the elixir was mixed before the very eyes
of the dazzled consumer.
One day a mysterious gentleman called on the president of
the soft drink company and handed him a small white envelope.
"This contains two words that will revolutionize your business
and multiply your profits," said the visitor. With trembling
hands, the executive extracted the paper from the envelope and
read the two words: BOTTLE IT.
Who could have foreseen the enormous cultural consequences
of the personal bottle? The basic issue: "Hands-on" replaced
the priestly, white-coated attendant. The personal bottle
replaced the fountain shrine. Power to the individual! It was
no accident that Coca-Cola instantly spread around the world as a
symbol of American egalitarianism. Everyone likes the "pause
that refreshes." The addiction, by the way, is not to the
stimulant or the sugar, but to the freedom of choice. The slogan
"Coke Is It!" really refers to the individual option provided by
the hands-on technology.
EVOLUTION/REVOLUTION
Nothing less than a new symbiotic partnership is developing
between human brains and computers. In evolving to more
physiological complexity, our bodies formed symbioses with armies
of digestive bacteria necessary for survival. In similar
fashion, our brains are forming neural-electronic symbiotic link-
ups with solid-state computers. It is useful to distinguish here
between addictions and symbiotic partnerships. The body can
become passively addicted to certain molecules, e.g., of heroin,
and the brain can become passively addicted to electronic
signals, e.g., from television. The human body, as we have
noted, also requires symbiotic partnerships with certain
unicellular organisms. At this point in human evolution, more
and more people are developing mutually dependent, interactive
relationships with their microsystems. When this happens, there
comes a moment when the individual is "hooked" and cannot imagine
living without the continual interchange of electronic signals
between the personal brain and the personal computer. There are
interesting political implications. In the near future, over
twenty million Americans will have established intense
interactive partnerships with their computers. These individuals
will operate at a level of intelligence that is qualitatively
different from those who use static forms of knowledge-
information processing. In America this difference is already
producing a generation gap, i.e., a species gap. After
Gutenberg, personal books created a new level of individual
thinking that revolutionized society. An even more dramatic
mutation in individual intelligence will occur as the new species
grows up linked symbiotically with personal information
processing systems.
CHILDHOOD'S END
It seems clear that we are facing one of those genetic
crossroads that have occurred so frequently in the history of
primates. The members of the human gene-pool who form symbiotic
links with solid-state computers will be characterized by
extremely high individual intelligency and will settle in
geographic niches that encourage individual access to knowledge-
information processing software.
New associations of individuals linked to computers will
surely emerge. Information nets will encourage a swift, free
interchange among individuals. Feedback peripherals will
dramatically expand the mode of exchange from keyboard punching
to neuro-physiological interaction. The key word is, of course,
"interaction." The intoxicating power of interactive software is
that it eliminates dependence on the enormous bureaucracy of
knowledge professionals that flourished in the industrial age.
In the factory culture, guilds and unions and associations of
knowledge-workers jealously monopolized the flow of information.
Educators, teachers, professors, consultants, psychotherapists,
librarians, managers, journalists, editors, writers, labor
unions, medical groups--all are now threatened.
It is not an exaggeration to speculate about the development
of very different post-industrial societies. Solid-state
literacy will be almost universal in America and the other
Western democracies. The rest of the world, especially the
totalitarian countries, will be kept electronically illiterate by
their rulers. At least half the United Nations' members now
prohibit or limit personal possession. And, as the implications
of home computers become more clearly understood, restrictive
laws will become more apparent.
In his chilling song "Life During Wartime," David Byrne of
the Talking Heads wails about the day when "We got computers...
I know that ain't allowed." If we are to stay free, we must see
to it that the right to bear computers becomes as inalienable as
the constitutional guarantees of free speech and a free press.
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