When Lee Felsenstein witnessed the emergence of the counterculture from the victory of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 he viewed it as the engineer that he was in process of becoming, asking himself “what technologies will be needed to make this scene the normal way of life in the future?” He has pursued that question for the rest of his life.

This led him to participate in the underground press of the 1960’s, in the creation of social media in 1973, in the hobbyist computer movement and in “those unforgettable next two years” of the personal computer industry’s eruption (1976-7). He showed how to add video display to the simplistic personal computers of the time, designed the first successful portable computer and recycled his earnings back into his long-term project Community Memory, of which he says, “we opened the door to cyberspace and found it to be hospitable territory”.

Lee has recently published a book “Me and My Big Ideas — Counterculture, Social Media and the Future” (Felsensigns.com) which describes his history and argues for a new generation of social media as a “civic systems” (like public parks) operated by the community’s members under the guidance of librarians.

In 2016 Lee was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum, of which he says, “I am an exhibit”. He lives in Redwood City, CA with his cat Lefty.