Hippies And Geeks Drop-In For Tim Leary Archive Project
By Tom Foremski - February 9, 2009
It was a rainy Sunday evening but the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco was full of people that had come out to support a project to house and digitize the the archives of Timothy Leary -- a Harvard lecturer in psychology turned counter-culture hero.
Mr Leary is best known for his enthusiasm for LSD, a drug that influenced the 1960s and much of his life. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is his most famous maxim.
The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD.
Joi Ito, venture capitalist and CEO of Creative Commons, was one of the speakers. Wikipedia reports:
Ito was one of Timothy Leary's so-called "God Sons" - a close non-traditional family-like relationship said to have been conceived by Leary for a few of his friends.
Some other guests Sunday evening:
Ralph Metzner (Colleague of Tim's at Harvard and co-author of "The Psychedelic Experience"), Joi Ito (Tim's Godson, CEO Creative Commons), Denis Berry (Futique Trust Trustee), RU Sirius (Collaborator, Author), John Perry Barlow (Friend of Tim, EFF Co-Founder, Grateful Dead Lyricist), Michael Horowitz (Tim's Personal Archivist), Lisa Ferguson (Grew up at Millbrook, Director of "Children of the Revolution"), Zach Leary (Tim's Stepson, Leary.com), Joey Cavella (Leary.com, Retinalogic), Chris Graves (Leary.com, Retinalogic) . . .
Brewster Kahle will also be on hand to give a little tour of the Internet Archive's recently launched Timothy Leary Video Collection: http://www.archive.org/details/Tim_Leary_Archive
The goal was to raise money to build a museum to house about 400 boxes of his archives, and enlist volunteers to help Lisa Rein digitize those materials. The event premiered the film "The Terrestials."
"The Terrestrials," Directed by filmmaker Rene Daalder, is a feature-length scifi documentary that follows 6 students of UC Santa Cruz as they digitize Tim's video archives.
Here is a brief video of the event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSmPLsUMJd0
Here is a CNET story by Daniel Terdiman about the Leary archives.
Timothy Leary's archives: Bridge from '60s to '90s | Geek Gestalt - CNET News
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Comments (2)
Timothy Leary Event Movie: "The Terrestrials" - Two Thumbs Down.
5 letters are all that's needed to review this film: BAD PR.
You must be joking! The only message that comes through loud and clear is: Don't let your kids take psychedelics, because they might end up like the clueless clowns in this movie. I felt embarrassed
and disgusted... almost angry.
The Timothy Leary footage was great. I would love to see more of that. But the Golden Gate Park footage with oldsters proclaiming "If you weren't there you don't have a clue!" made it clear that if you put a tie-die on a fuddy-duddy, you still get a fuddy-duddy. And why follow that airhead, woman (dare I
say girl?) around looking for some profound aha that will never come? Oh, I get it! Because the film makers are sexist (as well as age-ist) and couldn't stop themselves from following around a young hottie? PULLESE! Content... give us some intellectually stimulating content. Not just a bunch of fluff.
The drug laws must be repealed. This film was anti the cause! Two thumbs down!
Posted: February 11, 2009 3:47 PM
bo0g: Thanks for the warning! I skipped the movie and was told by others that they wished they had too.
And there was way too much about LSD at the event. It's a shame that an interesting life was made less interesting by the focus on Tim Leary's trips.
Posted: February 11, 2009 4:09 PM