[Shamanmuni]

If you read "What the Dormouse Said" by John Markoff you could reach the conclusion that a fellowship of LSD-fueled Übermenschen existed during the 60's and 70's and we had the personal computer revolution as a result. And no, I'm not talking just about Steve Jobs and Apple, there were many people involved with the nascent computer industry who turned on, tuned in and dropped out at that time.

[pnathan]

It's an interesting book. I think the author is too uncritical and not very good at providing the nuances of the ground reality. I do agree with at least a presupposition of the book, which is that the experimental mindset of the time allowed the personal computer industry to come into being.

It is absolutely vital to remember that the corporate computer industry (E.g., IBM, DEC, even the LispMs) were (i) alive (ii) vital, and (iii) doing things that were not to be replicated in PCs until the late 90s & early 2000s. So it'd be a bit interesting to consider the counterfactual "what if no Jobs hasn't been the marketer he was? what if Gates hadn't hustled the way he did?"

[Ollinson]

Unless you can link other eras of technological advance to LSD use this seems like a poor argument.

[Shamanmuni]

The article mentions Kary Mullis' use of LSD helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction, which revolutionized genetics and for which he won a Nobel Prize.

But I suspect from your tone that I could give a thousand examples and you wouldn't change your mind. C'est la vie.

[samstave]

One of the very early Cisco employees stated they made breakthroughs in developing routing tech specificAlly due to lsd.