MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In the 1980’s and 90’s, Timothy Leary used his countercultural notoriety to secure funding for nearly a dozen never-completed software projects. This paper examines correspondence and computer software from Leary’s archives, comparing the projects’ purported target audiences against the era’s prevailing notions of an “ideal user.” Considering Leary’s software and promotional writing alongside the virtual reality (VR) research that he collected during production, this paper argues that the “ideal subjects,” identified by both Leary and the VR community at large, were understood to be individual users, socially and politically “liberated” from real-world concerns of race, class, and gender. Leary’s failure to deliver his promised software, the paper argues, is one example of a broader tendency among VR projects to fail in actualizing politically escapist goals.

The paper begins with a brief review of the VR research that Leary collected during his software production efforts, situating it within a larger genealogy of 3-D graphics research. While 18th and 19th century 3-D vision products generally addressed middle-class users, the 20th century research demonstrates a shift towards conceptualizing users in terms of their liberation from previous social formations like class, race and gender. In recounting this shift, I build from a number of existing studies regarding the cultural history of computer technology, while introducing Leary’s unfinished software projects as a case study in failed, rather than successful, technological development. In conclusion, the paper argues that both VR research and Leary’s promotional material targeted self-directed, mobile users that were economically and socially privileged enough to enjoy the illusion of escape from socioeconomic realities. These “ideal users,” perhaps exemplified by Leary himself, were so adept at escaping reality that their software products never actually came to exist.