"Hacker Crackdown.Part 4.THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Like the Hackers Conference, "the Well" was an
emanation of the Point Foundation. Point Foundation,
the inspiration of a wealthy Californian 60s radical named
Stewart Brand, was to be a major launch-pad of the civil
libertarian effort.

Point Foundation's cultural efforts, like those of their
fellow Bay Area Californians the Grateful Dead, were
multifaceted and multitudinous. Rigid ideological
consistency had never been a strong suit of the *Whole
Earth Catalog.* This Point publication had enjoyed a
strong vogue during the late 60s and early 70s, when it
offered hundreds of practical (and not so practical) tips on
communitarian living, environmentalism, and getting
back-to-the-land. The *Whole Earth Catalog,* and its
sequels, sold two and half million copies and won a
National Book Award.

With the slow collapse of American radical dissent,
the *Whole Earth Catalog* had slipped to a more modest
corner of the cultural radar; but in its magazine
incarnation, *CoEvolution Quarterly,* the Point
Foundation continued to offer a magpie potpourri of
"access to tools and ideas."

*CoEvolution Quarterly,* which started in 1974, was
never a widely popular magazine. Despite periodic
outbreaks of millenarian fervor, *CoEvolution Quarterly*
failed to revolutionize Western civilization and replace
leaden centuries of history with bright new Californian
paradigms. Instead, this propaganda arm of Point
Foundation cakewalked a fine line between impressive
brilliance and New Age flakiness. *CoEvolution
Quarterly* carried no advertising, cost a lot, and came out
on cheap newsprint with modest black-and-white
graphics. It was poorly distributed, and spread mostly by
subscription and word of mouth.

It could not seem to grow beyond 30,000 subscribers.
And yet -- it never seemed to shrink much, either. Year in,
year out, decade in, decade out, some strange
demographic minority accreted to support the magazine.
The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have much in
the way of coherent politics or ideals. It was sometimes
hard to understand what held them together (if the often
bitter debate in the letter-columns could be described as
"togetherness").

But if the magazine did not flourish, it was resilient; it