Site search22 June 2025Allegra RosenbergGetty ImagesSilicon Valley has deep roots in the countercultural movements of the 1960s. The Grateful Dead both united and inspired early tech pioneers (Credit: Getty Images)Before the the internet took over the world, psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were among the first – and most influential – forces at the dawn of online communication.The Grateful Dead weren't just a band. They were a lifestyle. Originally a local blues outfit known as the Warlocks, they soon ascended to the rank of house band for author Ken Kesey's "Acid Tests", and by the late 1960s became a force to be reckoned with on the national touring scene. The Dead, as many call them, helped define San Francisco's characteristic counterculture, fusing folk and Americana influences with Eastern spirituality – as well as forward-thinking experiments with futuristic tools.But the Dead shaped far more than rock, psychedelia and '60s drug culture. Thanks to a group of music-loving tech enthusiasts, the Dead popularised what some call the first real online community. Generations later, the ideas formed in this pioneering digital space still reverberate through our daily lives.Fans of the Dead, known as "Deadheads", were inspired by the band's embrace of all things technological, from their pioneering sound systems to their immersive multimedia visuals. Many fans were technologists and engineers themselves, working in Silicon Valley or at universities around America with access to early internet technology – which they were using by the late 1970s to swap hot commodities like Grateful Dead setlists and illegal drugs.In the 1980s, years before the World Wide Web, a virtual online community emerged called the Well (the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link). Centred on the San Francisco Bay Area of California, the Well not only thrived in its own right, but proved to be one of the most influential factors in the birth of the internet as we know it today. And its long life wa