48 Hills’ Caitlin Donohue interviewed Digital Be-In founder Michael Gosney on the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the Human Be-In how the Summer of Love influenced the development of personal computing and technology.
48 Hills: Are the social change tactics developed in the 1960s still relevant today?
Michael Gosney: Well … yes … but there are obviously a whole new level of tools and systems that are available to us for social change, in large part because of the web — MoveOn.org is just one example. I do think that the outcome of the Human Be-In, among other things, outlined the importance of peaceful demonstration. That was one of the reasons for the Be-In in the first place, to create a united philosophy on the part of the counterculture at the time, which was torn between the Berkeley radicals wanting to fight fire with fire and the Haight Ashbury community wanting to engage in peaceful protest.
The full interview can be found here.