When Ken Kesey was shown an early version of a computer, he reportedly called them “the next thing after acid.” A new book takes the idea and runs with it: What the Dormouse Said: How the 60’s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff says that the sixties counterculture was responsible for the place that computers have come to have in society. As Roger Lowenstein explains in a New York Times commentary, Markoff claims “longhairs liberated computers from I.B.M. and the military industrial complex and profoundly shaped the technology that is ubiquitous today. Formerly sequestered behind forbidding glass walls, computers went on to become accessible, usable and friendly. The industry had its consciousness raised — became a vehicle of togetherness.” Dissecting the notion, Lowenstein says “Computer technology did turn out to be creative, spirited and even freeing. Most of this was a result of the fabulous advances in the power of the microchip. But perhaps, also, in the tactile clicking of the mouse, you can hear the faint strumming of a guitar.