ABSTRACT
The San Francisco Bay Area was famously one of the major meccas of hippie culture in the 1960s and 1970s, and that area was just adjacent to what became the symbolic center of digital innovation, Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco. The counterculture origins of much early digital culture work have had a lasting impact. In order for digital culture to become a significant phenomenon, two key technical things had to happen to make the Net more users friendly. The anti-authoritarian component of the digital world was soon at war with the commercial version, and that war continues in a variety of ways today. The Web has long been the center of most digital culture, but the features designated by the phrase “Web 2.0” represent the fact that it has become even more central. Most of the rest of the workers who create the digital stuff wealthier folks love to consume face far different, considerably less pleasant work conditions.
