One of the most perspective changing forms of encounter I think is when one comes upon a “known” thing in a context outside of which it was originally known. Running into friends from “real life” at Burning Man, for instance. For me, recently, I was reading about hippies and organic farming, and came across mention of the Whole Earth Catalog as a resource for homesteaders.
So the thing had nothing to do with computers in the beginning. There was a generation of idealistic young folk who wanted to be independent of the percieved bounds of post-war white-picket-fence America, and they needed to learn all of the skills and knowledge largely lost in post-industrial Western civilization in order to do so. Into that communal repository they deposited their learnings around tool making, growing crops, building houses and generating electricity, etc. and later around building machines that up until that point were strictly the domain of universities, large corporations, and government organizations.
The relics of the homesteaders can be seen in society’s niches: the off-grid tiny house, the local farmers who provide the produce for Michelin starred restaurants… though it amazes me that in so many instances throughout history, the enduring legacy is not always the same as the immediately obvious.
