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Timothy Leary's software (1985-1996): The dream of post-literal culture

Timothy Leary's software and the dream of post-literal culture (1985-1996)

Above: Select primary sources related to Timothy Leary's software projects. Click the titles for more information and larger window. Or, scroll to the bottom of this page for a table of contents.

This project examines the relationship between written and "post-literal" communication techniques in a digital archival setting, using the software of American psychologist Timothy Leary as a case study.

Although most famous for his status as a countercultural celebrity in the 1960s and 70s, Timothy Leary turned toward evangelizing for information technology in the 1980s, and pursued over one dozen software projects before his death in 1996.

While only one of Leary's software projects was ever commercially released (Mind Mirror, Electronic Arts 1985), his contributions to early technoculture include work moderating discussion on Stewart Brand's WELL network, a consulting credit on Interplay Entertainment's Neuromancer video game adaptation (1988), educational software trials at Pennsylvania State University, and a personal website/digital archive that won TIME magazine's 1996 "Cool Site of the Year" award (produced in collaboration with MIT media lab director Joi Ito's Digital Garage, Inc.).

Although most of Leary’s software-related materials are now housed at the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) Manuscripts and Archives division, digital materials have only been integrated within the broader Timothy Leary archives since 2007. Leary and his Futique Trust have previously made archival material available in various forms and locations since the 1990s, including the Internet Archive and Leary's personal website. This decentralization makes the Leary papers an ideal case study in new issues facing digital manuscript preservation, access, and interpretation. This project collects publicly-available resources from around the web in order to connect disparate sources in a more centralized fashion than has been previously available.

The "Table of Contents" below lists materials included on this site, most of which are usable via web. See "More on post-literal culture" for information on the themes present in Leary's work.

More information
This project was enabled by Rutgers University's School of Communication & Information Support for Doctoral Student Research Training, Summer 2016. It was developed in part during the Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2016, University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Feedback may be directed to james.hodges@rutgers.edu.

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Part of Leary's homepage, as presented via web circa 1998. Preserved and hosted by Internet Archive. Leary.com was developed by Chris Graves and Joey Cavella, with funding and guidance from Joi Ito's Internet Garage, Inc. The site used iconographic navigation techniques and three-dimensional Quicktime photography to simulate traversal through Leary's home. The site also contains scanned digital copies of primary materials from Leary's archives--in many cases, the earliest known digital copies. This site also arguably represents the fullest realization of Leary's multi-decade pursuit of "post-literal" communication techniques.
Hex readout from a commercially available disk image of Mind Mirror. Left column contains byte addresses, middle column contains hex values, and right column contains ASCII (text) values where applicable. Personality charting based on Leary's written works begins at address 021260. Several additional classifications derived from the circumplex model are also found in the text, including several located at address 04B480.
This is a scan of the instructions produced to accompany Interplay's 1988 game adaptation of William Gibson's Cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. A "special thanks" to Timothy Leary is included on page 1, likely in acknowledgement of his role enlisting the rock band DEVO to provide licensed music, and possibly also for his production of several early drafts for game art and dialogue (see Timothy Leary papers, New York Public Library, box 217 for more information). This scan also includes a printed summary of the content from Neuromancer's "Code Wheel" on PDF pages 18-19. The code wheel was a paratextual game piece, required for gameplay, that was used as a printed/analog form of copy protection. The code wheel summary and scanning are date stamped 7/10/1989, author not credited.