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This chapter shows how Utopian versions of American rugged consumerism emerged from the material limitations of the nation's counterculture theaters during the late sixties. In keeping with left-libertarian DIY projects such as the Whole Earth Catalog and Adhocism, off-off-Broadway playwrights such as Sam Shepard drew inspiration from their financial limitations and wrote plays to accommodate the discarded objects that they re-appropriated on walks around New York City. Drawing upon a number of autobiographical accounts from off-off-Broadway playwrights collected in the New York Public Library's theater archives as well as important historical studies by Stephen Bottoms and David Crespy, the chapter show how both within and beyond the magic circle of the stage, off-off-Broadway's rugged consumers transformed commodities and their waste products (including the commercial spaces of American theater) into renewed sites of creative production.

This chapter looks at how the initial discoveries of the playful possibilities of computing were seized upon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the wake of 1960s counterculture, approaches to computing that loosened the connection between means and ends—that allowed play—helped create a subculture within the community of computer engineers. This in turn helped set the conditions for the rise of the modern, internet-connected, graphically-capable computer. The chapter introduces the theme of romantic individualism, an enduring Western cultural discourse with an associated way of imagining the self that passed from milieus like the counterculture based in San Francisco, particularly that surrounding Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog, into the computer counterculture, as exemplified in the work of Ted Nelson, the computer visionary who coined the word hypertext. Against a background of Vietnam War era social disaffection, key romantic tropes—the strategic use of colloquial language, a studied informality, appeals to self-transformation instead of need-satisfaction, tales of sensitive rebel heroes, and a full-throated departure from instrumental rationality—became associated with alternative uses of computing.

Industries, firms, and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area and Los Angeles did not plan the economic divergence of their regions. They faced challenges from the restructuring of the Old Economy and benefited from the opportunities of the New Economy. Their successes and failures widened the income gap between the two regions. This chapter presents comparative case studies of entertainment, aerospace, information technology, logistics, and biotechnology in San Francisco and Los Angeles, showing how they developed differently and shaped specialization, wages, and income divergence in the two regions.

The chapter opener follows the efforts of Senator Gaylord Nelson to advance an environmental agenda. Such events as the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire were symbols of manmade environmental disruptions. Nelson inspired Earth Day as a way to engage public opinion. Many on the New Left and the environmental movement now saw consumerism as the source of dirty air and water, toxic fumes, poisoned foods, and littered landscapes. That was a point of view Ralph Nader shared. No book on consumerism could ignore Nader’s role in the rise of the consumer rights movement in the 1960s. This section looks at Nader’s background and the controversy he triggered when he published Unsafe at Any Speed, as well as his commitment to wide-ranging consumer rights and environmental projects. The following section looks at “hip consumerism” to show how the counterculture influenced personal styles and gender identities. It features Stewart Brand, who with Ken Kesey launched the “Trips Festival” in San Francisco and then went on to produce the bible of alternative consumption, The Whole Earth Catalog.