Wired’s founders drew on back-to-the-land communes, not the New Left

Evidence

Others criticized Barbook and Cameron’s linkage between the New Left of the 1960s and Wired’s techno-utopianism; as meticulously researched by Fred Turner, the founders of Wired were grounded more in the New Communalist movement of 1970s back-to-the-land hippies and the Whole Earth Cata log than the New Left. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Turner’s finding that Silicon Valley culture descends from the Whole Earth Catalog communalism recurs across digital culture scholarship; connects to counterculture-commerce debates in other readings.
• SEED: Angle: the lineage confusion between New Left politics and New Communalist lifestyle as it shapes how we read tech founders’ politics today.