Hippies And Geeks Drop-In For Tim Leary Archive Project
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
