DMT, the NeXT and the Soul of the Human/Machine - Andrew C. Stone, stone.com



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Today I’m going to talk about the intersection between software and psychedelics, most specifically about the long strange trip from the NeXT computer to iOS.

The Grateful Dead and all things psychedelic were central to my worldview coming of age in 1969 - just like Steve Jobs and so many others of my generation. Daring to risk damage to my chromosomes as State propaganda insisted it would, I first dropped acid in 9th grade, and learned that what starts as recreation can quickly become an ass-kicking as well as a beatific state of mind. I understand why the status quo feared these god-inducing substances, because once the Djinn, the Genie, had left the bottle of social control, there is no putting it back in. Your perception of reality emerges from your conditioned set of responses and inculcated beliefs, and here was something that could dissolve that conditioning and reveal a higher order.

When I was 16, I dropped out of high school and left the US to travel on a wanderlust in South America for 15 months, inspired by On The Road by Jack Kerouac and the Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. It was 1972 and I was a young seeker in search of truth and adventure. My North American mind was fully blown and I'm still recovering from the culture shock I received, not on my trip, but on returning to the US and witnessing the entitlement and ignorance of a populace glued to the TV set. When I was 16, I dropped out of high school and left the US to travel on a wanderlust in South America for 15 months, inspired by On The Road by Jack Kerouac and the Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. It was 1972 and I was a young seeker in search of truth and adventure. My North American mind was fully blown and I'm still recovering from the culture shock I received, not on my trip, but on returning to the US and witnessing the entitlement and ignorance of a populace glued to the TV set.

I got my GED and then a degree in Architecture and Planning from UNM in Albuquerque with an emphasis on solar design and sustainable architecture in 1977. I moved to a small farm in rural Northern New Mexico to try my hand at 'going back to nature' and I learned a lot about farming and subsistence living. Back in Albuquerque, I worked with a startup building parabolic concentrating solar collectors, but the