Right Place, Right Time

Some people always seem to end up in the right place, at the right time.

Stewart Brand had a lot of diverse experiences growing up, all of which combined to make him unique. His 2 year stint in the army gave him the discipline he would need for massive undertakings, and his participation in a study on (then legal) LSD opened windows into his mind.

Then, he moved to San Francisco.

San Francisco of the early 1960s was a lot like Athens 2500 years ago, or Florence during the Renaissance. Lots of brilliant minds were converging at the counterculture capital of the world, and this combined with cutting edge tech and scientific innovation of the nascent Silicon Valley in the most useful of ways.

While immersed in the budding world of hippies and drugs, Brand helped launch the Trips Festival, now considered the unofficial beginnings of the hippie movement, putting Haight-Ashbury front and center in the world of counterculture. Light shows and a very early Grateful Dead were among the beneficia…