Before its possession became a criminal offense in the United States, the psychedelic compound LSD-25 was given to engineers and designers to break "creative logjams" and promote innovation in the Cold War United States. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, for example, a group of researchers studied the effects of psychedelics on engineers from the Ampex Corporation inventor of the Video Tape Recorder. The result was a growing body of literature and data on psychedelic regimens and their effects on technical innovation. Looking to this research as well as evolutionary theories of mind, this talk will offer an historical, evolutionary and ecological framework for comprehending and evaluating recent claims by innovators such as Mitch Kapor, Mark Pesce and Kary Mullis that psychedelics played an integral role in the invention of their breakthrough information technologies and the digital arts and practices that emerge in their wake.
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