The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/etc/misc/cc0.txt

Text File | 2003-06-11 | 2.8 KB | 59 lines

Welcome one and all.

In the accompanying file, you will find a work-in-progress
which is a timeline of significant events for baby boomers,
bohemians, beatnicks, and hippies, focusing especially on
the sixties. "Significant" so far means it was significant to me,
a sixties hippie, and my hippie friends. I started putting
together this timeline because I was trying to write about
the sixties, and I had to remind myself of what happened when.
Then I kept going on into the seventies and eighties,
following the reverberations from the sixties, which I believe
are still happening. Then I got interested in how things
started and went back and read about the history of Bohemia,
and all those dates are now included. My reading of all this
led to some delightful insights on how themes echo through the ages.

The project is in limbo, because another timeline of the sixties
has been published, albeit not focused on the counterculture,
so I've been thinking of making it a "history of the counterculture".
I do think it is sad how little the counterculture knows of its
own history. Saul Landau bemoans the fact that, while in Europe
students learn the history of recent struggles from those who
lived through them, in the U.S. every new freshman class at
college, for instance, has no idea how recently the liberties
it enjoys - co-ed living, free speech, and to be politically
active, etc. - were won, and what it took to accomplish this.

The timeline has gaps all over the place, and details I have
not yet fully checked out. I'm sure it has all kinds of personal
biases, including being biased much more to the U.S. and to the
white middle-class than it should be. Help fix it. Make suggestions.
(Please note: the terms "negro" and "Indian" have been used
until the date when substitutes for these terms were proposed.
Also, I've been very understated about the punk movement and
Gen X, mostly because, if I get into those in detail, I'll
never finish, but also, I must admit, because I'm a sixties person.
If you think there are crucial dates/events from those cultures
that this has to have, let me know, but really, someone who is
familiar with them should do another whole timeline for them.
Somebody please do. We need chroniclers in this culture.)

I hereby copyright this work, in case I ever find a
publisher for it. But you may download it, copy it, and
GIVE it to friends, as long as no money is ever exchanged
for it. Like Bruce Sterling says, you don't own it, it's
just passing through you. Have fun, and bury me in e-mail
about what you think should be included or changed.
This could become a collective memory if we all participate.

Please send your e-mail to my account at: [e-mail]
and put "Sixties" or "Timeline" in your e-mail title,
so I'll be easily able to sort it out.
After all, I'm still trying to get a book written. :^)

[e-mail]
.