ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter it was argued that multimedia could not have existed in its present form without the technological developments prompted by the arms and space races of the Cold War. However, multimedia is more than just a set of technologies for communicating images and sound. It is an idea that also plays an important part in current political and cultural discourses: the multimedia computer as a revolutionary artefact with the potential to change the course of human history. This chapter will identify the origins of some
aspects of these discourses in the social revolt among middle-class young people in the US during the 1960s and 1970s that has come to be known as the ‘counter-culture’. It is argued that to fully appreciate multimedia as a cultural phenomenon, rather than simply as a technological one, requires an examination of the issues that concerned the counter-culture in the 1960s and 1970s.
