Dig That!

For G Pascal Zachary's seminar in science & technology policy I was reading Thomas P. Hughes on the emergence of counterculture influence of science & technology in the US post WWII, along with excerpts from Walter Isaacson's recently published biography on Steve Jobs. We got into the specifics: Jobs and Wozniak's early experience with phone hacking, Steve's ten-day retreats in Himalayan caves, and the tendency of elites to combine left and right to move the center. Gregg Zachary's lecture biography of Jobs gave prominence to LSD use among pioneers most instrumental in shifting counterculture attitudes in favor of liberation through technology. Zachary made excursions into Jobs' version of Buddhism and Kevin Kelley's Christian conversion experience.

I was reminded of Ralph Abraham, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at UC Santa Cruz. As GP Zachary's son is enrolled there, I mentioned Abraham to Gregg after the lecture. GPZ asked me to send him Abraham's personal essay on psychedelics in the computer graphics and mathematics revolutions of the 1960s.

Ralph Abraham was claimed by GQ Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Jose Mercury News, and other publications to be the man responsible for supplying LSD and DMT to California's mathematics and computer graphics revolutionaries. "Abraham Sells Drugs to Mathematicins" was the headline benath Ralph's photo in GQ Magazine's feature. While charmingly hyperbolic, the statement mischaracterizes the market for psychedelics in the 60s. As G Pascal Zachary noted this afternoon, the classified community decided to introduce scientists to LSD already in the late 50s. By the late 60s plenty of talented professional chemists had tried it and were eager to create lots more of the highest quality.

The link with Buddhism in all this is intriguing. Ralph Abraham, Steve Jobs, and so many others studied Buddhism idiosyncratically, but with great ferocity. I wonder what Steve Jobs' Buddhism consists of.

Where's the Ja'lus? Something has gone wrong historically. The mathematical and computer revolutionaries built new socio-technical systems but left the Big News in the lurch! I just can't get over this. Every day I am just baffled how close they came.

And I can't help but think this is what there is to do. The urgent work of getting the India trip just right. Returning with the Promethean flame.  Dig that!