Between the mid-60s and 1973, no fewer than a million Americans, most of them young, white, educated and relatively well-off, quit the cities and the class and racial war that was brewing there and headed not to a house in suburbia with a nice front yard, but to the countryside, for an experience in communal living and sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

In 1968, Stewart Brand created the Whole Earth Catalog to make available the information about the technological tools needed to create independent and sustainable communities. This authentic Bible of the Back to the Land Movement carried a very American message: "With access to the info we need, we can make the world a better place". [1]

The Communes did't work out. They failed in politics, in the art of taking collective decisions, because they were much more interested in a different and more personal change – "Why don’t you free your mind instead?", as the Beatles were singing. [2]

As the dream came to a close, computers and cyberspace become the new Frontier.

But things ended up taking a different and more consumerist turn. The Hippie-van eventually made way to an app you can use to summon "Your Private Driver". [3]