Happy Mutant Hall of Fame - Timothy Leary

Mark Frauenfelder picked Timothy Leary, high priest of the psychedelic counter culture of the 1960s and 1970s, starting with his trip to Cuernavaca, Mexico sixty years ago, when he consumed psychedelic mushrooms for the first time and drastically altered the course of his life.

Six years later, ESP Disk released his first spoke word album (link to Discogs listing of the CD re-issue with track titles, audio embedded above), using one of his most well-known phrases as the title: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. A year after the release of this recording, he wanted to change the phrase to "Drop out. Turn on. Drop in." (audio recording; via Wikipedia), but that first phrase stuck.

Mark also highlighted some of Dr. Leary's bibliography, some of which is available via the Internet Archive, and some of his interest in regeneration and life extension, which only brushes on his late-in-life turn towards futurism. There's also a mention of Leary with stars in his eyes and a computer in his head. Building onto the idea of the human brain being an underutilized biocomputer, his creation of the acronym SMI²LE is a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).

But the brief article didn't mention his 3rd revision of that lasting phrase, which seems like perfect fit for bringing this happy mutant into the home computer age. During his last decade, Leary proclaimed the "PC is the LSD of the 1990s" and tried to make "turn on, boot up, jack in" a new motto, to suggest joining the cyberdelic counterculture. He died before the dot-com bust and everything that has come after, so he didn't see his techno-utopianism get replaced by tech-bro visionaries who may use counterculture-type language of "disrupting" systems, but end up focusing on ways to profit from their systems that seem a lot like the old ways, but with black boxes "improving" connections between people. 

The Handbook was published before the good doctor departed this earthly realm, on May 31, 1996. Even in his final days, there was discussion of freezing his head. Instead, he was cremated and some of his ashes went space-ward, along with the ashes of 23 others. Also aloft in the world's first space funeral were fragments of Gene Roddenberry, who created the ''Star Trek'' television series; Gerard O'Neill, a space physicist, and scientists and pilots.