The “60s” didn’t lack for visionaries whose ideas might well be appropriate to revisit in our time of transitions and transformations today. McLuhan, Toffler, and Chardin are not the only we might point out. So, another post mentioning three more.
Alan Watts, whose translation of easter philosophy into western language, also is helpful in grasping a different environment today…where our old definitions and lines drawn don’t seem to work for us in the cloud… where things tend to “blend together” via multitudinous connections. This is an area Mr. Watts talked at great length about, and his recorded “talks” are all over the internet. Here’s one web page collection of his “stuff”.
Philip K. Dick, another very far out there source from the late 60s and 70s, seems ever more mainstream as the years go by. He foresaw some of the aberrations in reality made possible by artificial life, and developed a narrative including metaphysical insights into what happens when virtual reality starts to become a true alternate to “offline” experience. (see many films based on his stories, and his many published works, interviews, biographies… etc)
Stewart Brand, whose work with “The Whole Earth Catalog” was a real precursor to resources of objects and ideas being accessible in one big compendium. A collection of “tools”. He also was an early adopter and promoter of “personal computer tech” as being one of the important opportunities for “hippies” to pursue… which brought us some of the pioneers like Jobs and Wozniak, and many others, including some of the first concepts of a hyper language, with more or less infinite search of all human culture, and things like HTML and what it could accomplish.
There are many other visionaries of that time that might be applicable to present changes. Feel free to suggest and add those you think of… some of them are worth another look, and review.