Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Chronicle Of The Death Of A Laboratory: Douglas Engelbart And The Failure Of The Knowledge Workshop, Thierry Bardini, Michael Friedewald

Michael Friedewald

It is common knowledge that California, especially the San Francisco Bay Area is the birthplace of modern computing. Between 1945 and 1970 people such as Frederick Terman, professor of electronics at Stanford University, or William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor transformed the once rural Santa Clara County south of San Francisco into Silicon Valley, the fast growing industrial centre of high-technology. But the Bay Area of the 1960s is not only well known for technical ingenuity but also as the stronghold of social movements (anti-Vietnam, civil rights, women’s liberation), that are often subsumed under the term ‘counter culture’. It is …