 attention to our efforts. And here is where the psychedelic connection starts beaming through. I get a call from Grateful Dead lyricist turned cyber journalist John Perry Barlow - who is delighted I already know who he is from seeing him at SIGGRAPH in 1990 on a virtual reality panel with Timothy Leary.
Unlike the other VR boosters on stage, Barlow pipes up and says "the heck with half million dollar VR machines, I can get more VR bang to the buck for a $5 hit of acid." He taught me something very important that day: it was time to speak openly and honestly about psychedelics and their role in our lives and our cyberculture.
Thus began our long collaboration in keeping the mystical spark alive in the NeXT community. As you can tell from Steve's dark suit in that earlier photo, Steve had distanced himself from his acid roots, and was regrooving himself to be all corporate and straight-laced. That was definitely not what I had signed on for!
Understand that the NeXT was just not taking off the way Steve had envisioned. First, it was pitched as the academic's workstation. Builtin was Mathematica, Webster's Dictionary and the entire works of William Shakespeare. But academics didn't have $12 K handy, so that sales model failed. Then, it was on to publishing. The DisplayPostscript imaging model meant that you could zoom infinitely, and what you saw really was what would print, solving a major problem for prepress.
But something dark from America's psyche was revealed: We truly hate success. Sure, we're happy for our heroes for awhile, but we are not truly happy until they fall. US publishing houses did not buy in, sales faltered. And this is where Steve wandered from his path - he began courting the Fortune 500 and the dark agencies - NSA and CIA - because these people could afford his expensive machines.
No, for me success was not tons of cash, but coveted back-stage passes to Grateful Dead shows, where 20,000 psychonauts would take sacrament together and emergent group consciousness would flower. The power of community is immeasurable in the way it feeds our souls, and community was where I wanted my profits to be spent on.
| 
