Talk:Project One (San Francisco)

^[1] Markoff's version is misleading in several regards. The decision to drive to Moore's house flowed directly from the outcome of the community meeting, which I believe occurred in the ECOS offices. At that meeting, the fund recipients, while supported by people from Project One, were not part of it. Moore was already freaking out about the prospect of once again, releasing the funds. I've written to Markoff and will check other sources before posting in the article. SherryReson (talk) 23:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

In From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism,Fred Turner provides a philosophical and historical context for both Project One and Resource One. ^[1]

"At a time when the Vietnam War had widely discredited the military establishment, the Catalog offered them a way to imagine their own research not only as an extension of the academic-military-industrial collaborations that had spawned the ARPA community, but as a variation of the New Communalist project of working in small, forward-thinking groups to develop new forms of consciousness and community with the aid of small-scale technologies.

The Catalog performed similar ideological work within two other groups that would play an important role in imagining the use of computers in counterculture terms: the People's Computer Company and Resource One.

(pg 114-115) In the summer of 1971, Felsenstein joined Resource One, a gathering of former staffers from a volunteer switchboard and computer programmers who had left the University of California at Berkeley in protest of the invasion of Cambodia; Resource One was also a project partly funded by several thousand dollars Fred Moore had taken home from the Catalog's Demise Party. At Resource One, Felsenstein and others sought to establish public computing terminals at several locations in the Bay are, with an eye toward creating a peer-to-peer information exchange. Ken Colstad, a member of the project described its aims in a 1975 issue of the People's Computer Company thus: "Such a horizontal system would allow the public to take advantage of the huge and largely untapped reservoir of skills and resources that resides with the people.... [It would] counteract the tendencies toward fragmentation and isolation so visible in today's society." On the next page, in an article entitled "A Public Information Network," Efrem Lipkin made a similar point: "People must gain a sense of understanding of and control over the system as a tool....[Computer] intelligence should be directed toward instructing [the user], demystifying and exposing its own nature, and ultimately giving him active control.

The concept of building a peer-to-peer information system and the idea that individuals needed to gain control over information and information systmes had been features of both the New Communalist Movement and the New Left for some time. Yet the notion of doing these things with computers was relatively new, at least outside the walls of SRI and XeroxPARC.SherryReson (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

For those who hoped to turn computing machines towards populist ends, the religion of technology espoused by the Whole Earth Catalog offered an important conceptual framework and source of legitimation. In the early 1970s, for example, Lee Felsenstein began to design the Tom Swift Terminal-- a freestanding, easy to use terminal that would be as easy to repair as a radio. Although it was never built precisely to Felsenstein's first specifications, the Tom Swift Terminal design ultimately drove the creation of an early personal computer known as Sol. Felsenstein envisioned the Tom Swift Terminal "as something that could be printed in the Whole Earth Catalog. As he saw it, the Terminal would be "a way to do things. It might be built with technologies developed in the centers of American industry, but it could be used by individuals for their own purposes. With the Catalog and Brand himself as models,, the Tom Swift Terminal offered Felsenstein the chance to see himself not simply as a trained engineer, but as a Fulleresque Comprehensive Designer.

Pg 117-118 ... (Brand, Rolling Stone and Spacewars) The programmers and engineers at PARC and Resource One had long distinguished between "hackers" (those who figured things out as they went and invented for pleasure) and "planners" (those who pursued problems according to a set and less flexible stragegy). Brand picked up on this distinction and mapped it onto the larger, New Communalist critique of technocracy. Hackers, he wrote, were not mere technicians, but "a mobile, new-found elite, with its own apparat[us], language and character, its own legends and humor... in his feature, Resource One appeared to be not a fringe group of ex-hippies, but a central player in a new computer movement.SherryReson (talk) 19:10, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

The section on Eric Dollard Labs contains a rather casual reference to violating the fairly well established 1st and 2nd thermodynamic laws. After checking the listed source, I didn't find any information supporting that claim. I've cited it as dubious, and would recommend removing references to "over/unity" energy production. Fieromechanic (talk) 15:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC) Just saw this. Thank you. Can you suggest appropriate text for that section? SherryReson (talk)SherryReson —Preceding undated comment added 03:35, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I myself witnessed some of Dollard's experiments at Project One. His instruments recorded "over unity" effects. I cannot validate them. I did not state that those results were verified by peer-review or experimental replication. I do not say the results were factual. I only state that that is what his instrumentation showed, and what he claimed. Dollard is still experimenting and lecturing, and has a following online in the "alt-energy" scene. - R. Patch, resident at Project One 1971 - 1978 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:A8F1:4C20:25BF:DE98:5FE5:8B84 (talk) 22:03, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I notice that there's no mention of two related communes that were spinoffs of Project One, Project Two and Project Artaud. Project Artaud is an artists community rather than a technology one, and is still going today. Project Two I know less about, but was known for some extreme sexual and lifestyle experimentation and has a rather dark history in that it had some connection to the crimes of the child molester Luis "Tree Frog" Johnson - the mother of Alex Cabarga was one of the members of that commune, and basically gave the boy to Johnson, who was groomed into Johnson's partner in crime.

Project Artaud probably should have an article of its own, but both are worth mentioning somewhere in this article. 92.251.232.163 (talk) 16:29, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

The Russian Orthodox church in the Haight-Ashbury had a world-class men's choir.

This was heavily promoted by the Buckminster Fuller axis in the CIA, particularly Edgar Applewhite, who were working against the Russian Communists. This group of spooks were in constant contact with the Russian Orthodox Church within the Soviet Union through the very active Orthodox community on the Greek island of Athos.

Buckminster Fuller might deserve another turn in this story through the connections with Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney Jr.) and Peter Rabbit of Colorado. both transients -- today's word might be "influencers" -- through this scene.

Later, the Athos Orthodox folks became embroiled in the corruption of a Greek banker active in a Socialist government elected after the fall of the Colonels, and all sorts of scandal have ensued.

I speculate, but do not know, that the Athos folks lost their bearings somewhat as the Patriarchate in Moscow made their way from the ambiguities of the Soviet era, through enthusiastic cooperation with the Andropov-Yeltsin transition, and now into the uncertainties (at march 29, 2022) of the Putin, uh, administration.

One must sympathize. It must be an easy maze to get lost in.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 15:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Stimulated memory is very inventive, and not all the claims in the article are plausible. The idea that the first computer bulletin board was made in 1973 seems ridiculous to me, but it may have a foundation on an idiosyncratic definition of "computer bulletin board."

Many of the aims of this family of communities see to me sane and decent, but there is a strong streak or irrationality and some untruth close to the middle of it all. The theories of physical reality associated with Dollard and Farnsworth are incorrect even though their aficionados are able to produce some impressive Hollywood effects with very high voltage direct current. An earlier generation of electrical wizards had made careers in the silent movies, and Tesla himself lived for some time off money from investors he impressed with his talk, but big sparks stopped being boffo once sound and color came along.

The article makes several offhand references to "agencies" and other nameless entities. I think that the well-endowed Glide Memorial Church would deserve at least a walk-on part with a couple or more named actors in this play. I saw the Village People perform the fine pieces that Donald Trump has used in his campaign onstage at Glide in 1967 or early 1968. It was all a fertile seed-bed -- or perhaps a luxuriant show window. I'm not sure we can be certain which it was.

Under "connections," I think we should all remind ourselves from time to time that The Haight is represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House, Hon. Nancy Pelosi.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 15:33, 19 March 2022 (UTC)