Sounds like they took acid and also designed it doesn’t sound like they designed anything more interesting because of the acid. In fact (no shade on a good trip) maybe they’d have got more designing done if they weren’t taking acid at work.
One thing that is often revealed when on psychedelics is how unreliable how things seem is, though this realization tends to not be transportable across the barrier between the two states.
Those stories remind me of a Carlos Santana (the guitarist) anecdote:
during the late 70s he would often play guitar on acid. He felt great and that his music was among the best he ever played. He then asked to be recorded in one of those sessions/concerts where he gave his very best.
Few days later he went to the studio, excited to hear what he produced in that session and..he just couldn't listen to it. It was awful, the worst of his recorded performances ever by far. Missing notes and beats out of time, pointless arpeggios, just terrible.
He then decided that he was never ever going to do anything related to his profession on drugs.
I too tried to code and do professional stuff on drugs in the past. It just doesn't work. You may enable a part of your brain that gets less used when you're normal, but you entirely lose the relevant one evolution gave you to process information and distinguish between good and bad idea. You also get super lazy.
Thus I second your thinking: they probably thought of touch or other devices when high not because of it.
Also, I'd like to add that I think those stories are only good when not fact checked. Didn't 2001: Space Odissey feature advanced touch devices that streamed video, had video calls, productivity and much more? That's a 1968 movie and I'm quite confident it was probably not the first thing those devices where imagined.
Imo acid works for me almost the way that the famous saying about writing claims it does - write drunk, edit sober. Except it is more like "think about stuff and write it down on acid, act on it and process it again sober".
The main difference compared to alcohol, weed, and a lot of other drugs is that it leaves a fairly long-lasting change. And not in a way that's like "oh, I am still feeling it", but more like how I imagine ketamine is supposed to work (never took it, so cannot validate personally) - while the drug is acting, you process and realize certain things that you had been unknowingly suppressing in your daily life, all while feeling funky. Once the drug wears off, you don't feel funky anymore, but you remember the parts you had been suppressing until that point, and now you can think through and process them normally and fully sober. So it isn't the drug itself still acting, you just ended up realizing certain things, and that realization let you consciously think about them later.
Of course, it is also possible to have an acid trip where you don't realize anything and just waste your time on it. But imo that's a fool's errand, because acid doesn't feel that enjoyable just or "fun" on its own. At least it never did to me. But I am immensely glad the few times in my life I gave it a try. I would not call those experiences fun at all, but certain realizations about the direction of my life and my place in lives of others stuck with me (after i processed them sober later). And imo I, and people around me, are better off due to that.
P.S. I am one of those people who cannot write any good code or be productive when drinking alcohol at all, not even the smallest amount that will make me feel it. Same with weed. And I am acutely aware of it.
I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”
Haven't taken LSD but I have done writing on weed.
I think it reduces inhibitions, which has tradeoffs. There's a lot of crap, but there's also a lot more than I'd usually write, and sometimes it's stuff I'd never have written out sober (for good or bad reasons).
I'd say it's a worthwhile endeavor on occasion for recreation, and unlikely to help professionally, at least for me.
This article appears to be a misleading write-up of the "California: Designing Freedom" exhibit, the central premise of which is that "California has pioneered tools of personal liberation, from LSD to surfboards and iPhones."
That being said, there is an actual causal relationship between LSD and HyperCard: "Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media."¹ — Bill Atkinson
For more, see the Mondo 2000 article, "The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard".²
One thing young people don't understand (probably because they didn't experience it) was that the introduction of LSD to engineers and other technical people was a revelation and very inspiring. The mindset back then was formal and rules based. LSD taught people to think outside of the box. We now live in a world that has benefited from that thinking and also a world in which a lot of people have taken LSD and it's old news. It's hard to capture the excitement of that time.
It's the transition or inflection point that was inspiring, like movie goers in the 1930's who were only used to black and white movies going to see Wizard of Oz and being amazed that it turned into color, something they had never seen. But it was much more profound than that because it felt possible to rewrite the world to be a better place if enough people took LSD. Nobody feels that way today.
There’s a great documentary available on YouTube just called “Hippies” or similar. One of the main things I took from it was how earnest those young people were about trying to find a better way of living than their parents. They’d seen how neurotic and stressed the typical 50s existence had made their family and wanted something better for themselves.
We brush over how remarkable it was that they even recognised that and tried to do something different. Even those who didn’t take part got at least some sense of it through the music and art of the time.
Doesn’t every generation of young people do this? Rebel at least a little against their parent’s way of life to attempt to make their own lives better by their own measure.
Sure a little mind altering experience can be an inspiration to some, but it’s not at all unique or required for young people to want change.
Good question but I'm struggling to come up with any examples.
Religion, the authority of parents/elders, finding a mate and building and supporting a family; these were powerful forces for hundreds of years and people snapped to them pretty reliably. Until the 60's.
I'm not a historian so it's very likely there are counterexamples I'm not thinking of.
> Religion, the authority of parents/elders, finding a mate and building and supporting a family; these were powerful forces for hundreds of years and people snapped to them pretty reliably. Until the 60's.
Yup you’re not a historian and missing very much of the social development that happened for example, between 1850 and 1930. A lot of basic freedoms people don’t even think about when developed in these times.
An example of things not being the same is Christmas which was a drunken party in the Middle Ages through until mid 19th century and the modern family centered Christmas was basically created by Charles dickens with a Christmas Carol and still it wasn’ta widespread generally celebrated holiday until the post-WWII prosperity and class equality in the 1950s.
A lot of what you might think of as “things which were always like this” from the 50s was actually people seeking normalcy post war adopting conservative “traditional” lifestyles which were actually quite different than the past.
> An example of things not being the same is Christmas which was a drunken party in the Middle Ages through until mid 19th century and the modern family centered Christmas
Not sure why you are being downvoted, there are still plenty of places in rural Europe where, after a family dinner, the burning of a Yule in the village centre is pretty much an excuse for the whole village to get drunk together.
There are probably more but the ones I've been to were in Iceland (Þrettandinn), in Portugal (Madeiros de Natal), and in Latvia (Bluķa vilksana). They all had the same vibe even though quite a part in geography, a celebration to get together outside in peak winter and burn giant logs to get warm.
Your example is orthogonal to the GP's question of every generation always rebelling against the previous generation.
Christmas is just one holiday, specific to Christianity, and not really representative of religion broadly in terms of daily rituals, beliefs, and practices.
My parents will endlessly criticize me for wondering if a menial home task is worth doing and when. Mum works extremely hard at her job (in-person & remote split), and goes back to her house to spend all her free time doing chores. She'll even do work in unscheduled hours on the weekend when she's bored. She's very much bound to being busy. I am not this person. I've talked to her about how she seems stressed, and that she should decide when to do chores. Not "see a chore, go do it" - which is great initiative - but decide if that chore can wait a day or 2 and would make sense being done with another.
My dad is less like my mom, but he'll give me hell about this shit and call me lazy. My parents don't recognize the free time they have and fill it with obligations. I'd rather spend 1 day doing all the chores than filling my 3-day Christmas weekend with them and never relaxing.
They look down at the few possessions and responsibilities I keep. I'm happier and I can't share that. They'll never see it.
I’d like to think that as long as there are new people, LSD will never be “old news”? Certainly new people are born into a word that has been influenced by psychedelics, but for regularly functioning people, your day-to-days are still pretty square with plenty to explore outside the box. It’s easy to get caught in routines and inertia, getting used to things is what humans are sort of best at, and society still demands this of us one way or another.
I certainly believe that. There's still a lot of value in taking a few psychedelic trips and research is showing they might even be therapuetic for depressed people. That was the case for me. But for people without depression there's still value in taking a look at and questioning the belief systems you were raised in to see if there's anything you might change to make an improvement.
It appears that the pre-requisite to benefit from LSD inspiration is still a formal education in some specialty with a thorough understanding of fundamentals of that specialty in order to achieve some revolutionary breakthrough.
I get the impression that a customer-facing employee might not get the same level of impact other than, maybe, in an aspect of personal life.
So if LSD was used by those who laid the road towards the modern ad ridden and divisive internet: does that mean conservatives were right that it was evil?
Owsley Stanley, a Berkeley student, was the primary producer of LSD for the western US between 1965-1967. I always thought the joke was a reference to him.
Out of sight, out of mind. Now in this case it's actually in your mind, but if technology becomes invisible, people will "think" about it less, which makes it easier to become ever more exploitative. That this is the declared endgame only shows how brazen the disdain has gotten.
Douglas Rushkoff’s “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry” (2005) studies this as well, for anyone who’s interested in this history.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadduring the late 70s he would often play guitar on acid. He felt great and that his music was among the best he ever played. He then asked to be recorded in one of those sessions/concerts where he gave his very best.
Few days later he went to the studio, excited to hear what he produced in that session and..he just couldn't listen to it. It was awful, the worst of his recorded performances ever by far. Missing notes and beats out of time, pointless arpeggios, just terrible.
He then decided that he was never ever going to do anything related to his profession on drugs.
I too tried to code and do professional stuff on drugs in the past. It just doesn't work. You may enable a part of your brain that gets less used when you're normal, but you entirely lose the relevant one evolution gave you to process information and distinguish between good and bad idea. You also get super lazy.
Thus I second your thinking: they probably thought of touch or other devices when high not because of it.
Also, I'd like to add that I think those stories are only good when not fact checked. Didn't 2001: Space Odissey feature advanced touch devices that streamed video, had video calls, productivity and much more? That's a 1968 movie and I'm quite confident it was probably not the first thing those devices where imagined.
The main difference compared to alcohol, weed, and a lot of other drugs is that it leaves a fairly long-lasting change. And not in a way that's like "oh, I am still feeling it", but more like how I imagine ketamine is supposed to work (never took it, so cannot validate personally) - while the drug is acting, you process and realize certain things that you had been unknowingly suppressing in your daily life, all while feeling funky. Once the drug wears off, you don't feel funky anymore, but you remember the parts you had been suppressing until that point, and now you can think through and process them normally and fully sober. So it isn't the drug itself still acting, you just ended up realizing certain things, and that realization let you consciously think about them later.
Of course, it is also possible to have an acid trip where you don't realize anything and just waste your time on it. But imo that's a fool's errand, because acid doesn't feel that enjoyable just or "fun" on its own. At least it never did to me. But I am immensely glad the few times in my life I gave it a try. I would not call those experiences fun at all, but certain realizations about the direction of my life and my place in lives of others stuck with me (after i processed them sober later). And imo I, and people around me, are better off due to that.
P.S. I am one of those people who cannot write any good code or be productive when drinking alcohol at all, not even the smallest amount that will make me feel it. Same with weed. And I am acutely aware of it.
I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/31/turpentine-prevails...
I think it reduces inhibitions, which has tradeoffs. There's a lot of crap, but there's also a lot more than I'd usually write, and sometimes it's stuff I'd never have written out sober (for good or bad reasons).
I'd say it's a worthwhile endeavor on occasion for recreation, and unlikely to help professionally, at least for me.
Talks about Google's "material design" as recent. Did anything ever use that much?
“The tripping Californians”
(I think the “the” makes it clearer)
That being said, there is an actual causal relationship between LSD and HyperCard: "Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media."¹ — Bill Atkinson
For more, see the Mondo 2000 article, "The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard".²
¹ https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
² http://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hype...
It's the transition or inflection point that was inspiring, like movie goers in the 1930's who were only used to black and white movies going to see Wizard of Oz and being amazed that it turned into color, something they had never seen. But it was much more profound than that because it felt possible to rewrite the world to be a better place if enough people took LSD. Nobody feels that way today.
We brush over how remarkable it was that they even recognised that and tried to do something different. Even those who didn’t take part got at least some sense of it through the music and art of the time.
Sure a little mind altering experience can be an inspiration to some, but it’s not at all unique or required for young people to want change.
Religion, the authority of parents/elders, finding a mate and building and supporting a family; these were powerful forces for hundreds of years and people snapped to them pretty reliably. Until the 60's.
I'm not a historian so it's very likely there are counterexamples I'm not thinking of.
Yup you’re not a historian and missing very much of the social development that happened for example, between 1850 and 1930. A lot of basic freedoms people don’t even think about when developed in these times.
An example of things not being the same is Christmas which was a drunken party in the Middle Ages through until mid 19th century and the modern family centered Christmas was basically created by Charles dickens with a Christmas Carol and still it wasn’ta widespread generally celebrated holiday until the post-WWII prosperity and class equality in the 1950s.
A lot of what you might think of as “things which were always like this” from the 50s was actually people seeking normalcy post war adopting conservative “traditional” lifestyles which were actually quite different than the past.
Not sure why you are being downvoted, there are still plenty of places in rural Europe where, after a family dinner, the burning of a Yule in the village centre is pretty much an excuse for the whole village to get drunk together.
Your example is orthogonal to the GP's question of every generation always rebelling against the previous generation.
Christmas is just one holiday, specific to Christianity, and not really representative of religion broadly in terms of daily rituals, beliefs, and practices.
My dad is less like my mom, but he'll give me hell about this shit and call me lazy. My parents don't recognize the free time they have and fill it with obligations. I'd rather spend 1 day doing all the chores than filling my 3-day Christmas weekend with them and never relaxing.
They look down at the few possessions and responsibilities I keep. I'm happier and I can't share that. They'll never see it.
I get the impression that a customer-facing employee might not get the same level of impact other than, maybe, in an aspect of personal life.
— Anonymous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley
That's a super dystopian end-game. :(
He led the design group. I have no idea if he dropped acid during his time working there but I sure hope so!