With the death of Steve Jobs we have lost one of our most brilliant minds and successful entrepreneurs. Many tributes are being written about his impacts on the computer and communication industries. To really appreciate the genuine genius of Steve Jobs, we need to understand the cultural climate in which he grew up. He was a self-identified “child of the sixties counterculture” who attributes much of his success to the Silicon Valley and San Francisco communities in which he spent his early years (same time and place where the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and others started.) This article explores the nature and extent of the counterculture’s influence over the development of the computer in general, and on Apple computers in particular. This type of insight is vital if we ever hope to find “the next Steve Jobs.”
This article collects most of what has been written about Steve Jobs’ early life. Particular attention is paid to how extensively Steve and other computer pioneers were greatly influenced by the values and vision of the hippie counterculture. Steve came of age in the epicenter of this social movement. He clearly embraced the hippies’ practices and philosophy. Many of the tributes included here show how his business behavior was shaped by his distrust of authority and willingness to expand his mind in many directions. To provide further context, I include a seminal article written by Stewart Brand in 1995 called “We Owe it all to the Hippies.” I also collect detailed reviews of an important book called “What the Dormouse Said.” This article also includes a letter sent to Steve Jobs from Albert Hofman (discoverer and proponent of LSD). Steve Jobs acknowledged the importance of this psychedelic compound in shaping his own life and career. It is entirely possible that we will never see “another Steve Jobs” unless another form of “hip counterculture” is allowed to flourish. Given the conservative and corporate nature of modern American society, that is very unlikely. Click Below to Learn More:
The HipHappy Times 
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