New Books Network: Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and Californian and Texan Ideologies

Date: February 25, 2026
Podcast: Peoples and Things (New Books Network)
Host: Lee Vinsel & guest co-host Paula Bialski
Guest: Fred Turner, Professor of Communication at Stanford

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep with Fred Turner, renowned for his foundational book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, on the intellectual and cultural currents connecting 1960s Californian countercultural movements to today’s Silicon Valley and emerging Texan tech ideologies. The conversation covers:

• How utopian dreams and technophilia intermingled historically and today
• The evolution and mythologies of Silicon Valley culture
• The roots and dangers of right-wing techno-ideologies in the tech world, including “Dark Enlightenment” thinkers like Curtis Yarvin
• Social anxieties, power, and marginalization within the Valley
• Fred Turner's reflections on his methods, legacy, and upcoming projects

The hosts and guest maintain an engaging, thoughtful, and candid tone, accessible for academic and general listeners alike.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: Academia, Parenthood, and "Good Enoughness"

• [00:46] Co-host Paula Bialski shares her personal and academic journey, connecting her work on “good enough software” to parenting and contemporary debates on AI/LLMs in the workplace.
  • She discusses her research proposal “GEAR,” which uses the “good enoughness” lens to analyze generative AI at work:

    "Much of the current debates around AI and LLMs are filled with speculation, technical misunderstandings, hype, or moral panic. GEAR takes a different approach. It treats generative AI not as an abstract threat or technological promise, but as a concrete workplace tool whose effects can only be understood by observing how professionals actually use, contest and learn from it in practice." (Paula, 03:21)

  • Lee Vinsel highlights the role of “taste” (as opposed to “vibe coding”) in determining what counts as “good enough" and who gets to decide.

    "You have to have taste to know what good and what good enough is. But how do you get taste? And we know these tools are mostly helping people who already know a lot." (Lee, 06:53)

Introducing Fred Turner and His Work

• [09:35, 15:16] Paula and Lee discuss Fred Turner's dual identity as a scholar and musician, praising his generosity and influence.
• Fred is lauded for his work tracing how 1960s countercultural ideals became embedded in Silicon Valley, shaping its culture and ideologies, especially in From Counterculture to Cyberculture (C2C).

  "How the dreams of the 1960s didn't disappear but helped shape the Silicon Valley." (Paula, 16:07)

• Paula emphasizes the value of finding "sweet people" rather than just big academic names.

Revisiting "From Counterculture to Cyberculture": Origins and Impact

• [17:12] Fred Turner summarizes the purpose of C2C:

  “The book is an effort to try to understand how it was that utopian ideas got associated with and attached to machines that in the 1960s were imagined by most folks as anything but utopian.” (Fred, 17:12)

• He describes Stuart Brand (of the Whole Earth Catalog) as the bridge figure connecting 1960s counterculture with later tech optimism, using events and networks to carry forward the ideology.
• Fred reflects on the influence of his journalism background on his scholarly approach—leading with people and stories rather than abstract ideas:

  "You always lead with people because people want to know about people and ideas follow the people." (Fred, 19:25)

• He consciously avoids discipline-bound jargon to remain accessible and cross-disciplinary.

The Counterculture–Techno-culture Nexus: Myths and Realities

• [29:12] Fred clarifies misconceptions about C2C, noting that the counterculture was never purely "anti-corporate" or "anti-tech":

  “One of the fictions around counterculture to cyber culture is that somehow I told the story of how hippies brought us computers. And that's not actually correct.” (Fred, 29:15)

• He describes the legacy of technocentrism and corporate affinity within the Californian “new communalists.”
• Burning Man is dissected as a manifestation of these values—a project-based, team, tech-centric event that superficially signals communal or countercultural ethos, but, per Fred, actually re-inscribes mainstream American values:

  "In essence, to make Burning man work, you have to build a bunker against the desert and then you can party." (Fred, 34:19) "Burning man was never deeply countercultural… Very white, very wealthy, very plugged in… Not a world that challenged the core values of mainstream America." (Fred, 35:21)

Techno-Authoritarianism: Texas, the “Dark Enlightenment,” and Fear

• [41:48] Fred addresses the rising public profiles and influence of right-wing techno-political thinkers like Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel, warning of an authoritarian "commune logic at scale":

  "I think we're inhabiting a moment where people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, members of the PayPal mafia, others have taken core ideas and core techniques from what we thought might have been a counterculture...and they're turning those into glosses on ways they want to run the world." (Fred, 42:09) "It's a recipe for authoritarianism." (Fred, 43:23)

• These figures, Fred argues, are less about euphoria or utopian escape and more about control, order, and a darkly technocratic vision.
• Texas Ideology becomes shorthand for an extractive, exploitative, “war of all against all” mode of tech capitalism, contrasted but connected to the Californian mythos.

Silicon Valley Now: Unseen Inequality and Social Fear

• [50:24] Fred discusses his recent book, Seeing Silicon Valley (photo book collaboration with Mary Beth Meehan) and the challenge of making the invisible working class in Silicon Valley visible to the world.

  "I wanted to kind of literally make visible what was here." (Fred, 51:07) "The blindness was so powerful." (Fred on publishers, 54:49)

• The current Valley vibe, he says, is pervasive fear:

  “There’s one word that describes the energy everywhere here in Silicon Valley and all across most of America, and it’s fear. It's fear. We are watching an authoritarian takeover of our state…” (Fred, 56:33) “At the highest levels, among those on the right, opportunity. What is the opportunity, given the new leadership, to continue to profit and to grow our firms?... It scares the heck out of me when I see Elon Musk rummaging through the national databases, trying to knit them together. That looks to me like a straight up effort to build the infrastructure of fascism.” (Fred, 58:57)

• Lee and Fred discuss the terrifying implications of surveillance infrastructures being weaponized by or for authoritarian actors.

AI Optimism, Infrastructure, and Power

• Conversation turns to the “computerization movement” (Susie Yakano & Rob Kling) and hype cycles around AI/LLMs.

  “The utopian claims for AI and the dystopian claims for AI are part of a computerization movement… As a new technology comes into being, a group of actors… will partner with others… and begin to tell stories about the potential of this technology for whatever change.” (Fred, 62:29)

• AI, in Fred’s view, is driven more by capital and institutional self-interest than by actual transformative possibility.

California vs. Texas: Competing Ideologies

• [66:39] Fred previews his forthcoming Baffler essay on “Texas Ideology”:

  "When you think about Texas ideology, you can think about a wildcatting ideology. We're going to go out. The land is ours to take from and explore… It's the war of all against all." (Fred, 66:47) "The California version looks really sweet and hip... But the California model is pretty malevolent as well." (Fred, 68:00)

Reflections on Work, Legacy, and New Projects

• Fred notes the “snowball effect” of his successful books, both empowering and limiting:

  “Books I've done that have been most successful are actually in some ways the most oppressive to me going forward... it threatens to kind of roll me over…” (Fred, 48:01)

• He briefly describes his next major book—tentatively titled City of Desire—on the New York art world of the 70s and 80s, tracing the shift from liberal to identity politics, and cultures of mutual representation and sexual desire.

  "I'm in a book that's very much focused on the New York art world of the 1970s and 80s... what I'm trying to chronicle is that turn from the liberal era to the identity era..." (Fred, 71:07-72:00)

• New research by his student Becca Lewis will tackle the rise of Silicon Valley's political right.

Notable Quotes

• Fred Turner on counterculture’s limits: "The counterculture, or at least the part of the counterculture that I wrote about… was always already technocentric, was always already in bed with the corporate world, already saw business and technology as the best way to do things as distinct from politics." (29:45)
• On the tech world’s myth of cool: "There's a way in which the book gets tactically misread by folks in the sciences and in the tech world as evidence that they are in fact, as cool as Ken Kesey and his crowd were. What I'm trying to write an account of is how they became legitimate in that way and what they use the book for is to say we're legitimate." (49:09)
• On the present mood in Silicon Valley: "There’s one word that describes the energy everywhere here in Silicon Valley and all across most of America, and it’s fear." (56:33)
• On infrastructure & fascism: "That looks to me like a straight up effort to build the infrastructure of fascism." (58:57)
• On critique of disciplinary silos: “Far more often, what I see people doing is scrabbling after curiosities that just really bother them and trying to figure them out... I work very hard to translate the questions that animate me into plain language that travels across disciplines and to invite people in from all different disciplines.” (24:07)
• On ideology shifts: "The right hates this. And I would argue that one of the things that we're seeing now in the attacks on LGBTQ people, on people of color, the whole anti woke movement, is a delayed response to the thing whose rise I'm trying to chronicle." (73:34)
• Paula Bialski on intellectual community: “Go to sweet people. Like that’s really the most important thing because there’s too many jerks in this world and you have to spend your time with good people and Fred is a very good person, I'd say.” (11:41)

Segment Timestamps

• 00:00-09:18: Hosts catch up, discuss AI/LLMs at work, research on "good enoughness," and tech labor change.
• 09:18-15:16: Introducing Fred Turner, his scholarship, and personal quirks.
• 15:16-24:07: Turner reflects on Counterculture to Cyberculture, journalism, and cross-disciplinary methods.
• 24:07-29:12: Avoiding jargon; advice for scholars; academia vs. journalism.
• 29:12-36:18: Counterculture, technophilia, Burning Man, and their hidden mainstream/corporate logic.
• 41:48-48:01: Dark Enlightenment, right populism & tech, media attention, authoritarian infrastructure.
• 50:24-56:33: Seeing Silicon Valley, making invisible inequality visible, Valley’s mood (“fear”).
• 56:33-66:39: Discussion of AI, social infrastructure, working class, organizational power.
• 66:39-74:14: Texas vs. California ideologies, new projects: right-wing Silicon Valley, New York art world, cultural politics.
• 74:14-end: Closing thanks and podcast credits.

Memorable Moments

• [14:00] Paula improvises a dulcimer “hippie song” in honor of Fred Turner’s musical side.
• [36:18] Fred draws a provocative parallel between Burning Man’s need for a "bunker" and the prepper ethos among Silicon Valley’s elite.
• [49:08] Fred describes being amused and frustrated by scientists misreading his C2C book to confirm their own coolness.
• [55:31] Fred recounting the “blindness” of American publishers to real Silicon Valley—wanting only Mark Zuckerberg-type stories, not working-class realities.

Summary

Fred Turner's work uncovers how the promises and paradoxes of 1960s counterculture fused with Cold War technocracy to give rise to Silicon Valley's utopian (and increasingly dystopian) logics. In this episode, Turner, with candor and depth, explores how the cultural DNA of both California and Texas continues to shape not just tech, but American identity, power, and politics—and why the stories we tell about technology matter as much as the code itself.

Recommended for:
Anyone curious about the social and cultural history of technology, the politics of Silicon Valley, the roots of current tech ideologies, and the complex interplay between counterculture, capitalism, and power.