Did the New Media Technologies Revolution start as a Counter Culture?

Observing the recent and relatively short history of Information and Communication Technologies suggests an important question: Does the evidence of this radical revolution in modern day society point to the makings of a true counter culture?

It's the chicken and the egg argument: does society shape the use of technology or does technology shape society? "The term 'social shaping' borrowed from technology studies, is usually associated with the critique of strong technological determinism and a shift toward strong social determinism in the 1970's and 1980's in that field (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). As ...noted of mass communication research several years ago "in technological determinism, research and development have been assumed as self-generating. The new technologies are invented ... in an independent sphere, and then create new societies or new human conditions." Since then "... new media researchers in the social sciences are virtually united in rejecting accounts in which technological innovation is the cause and society is the effect (see e.g. Wolgar, 2002). Instead they have adopted the counter view that the technological, instead of being a sphere separate from social life is part of what makes society possible - in other words it is constitutive of society (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999;23). ... It has subsequently become the dominant perspective in new media studies (Boczkowski and Lievrouw, forthcoming; Livinstone in press)." Lievrouw, L., Livingstone, S. (eds) (2006) The Handbook of New Media, Updated Student Edition, London. pgs. 3-4.

Even if this is now the dominant perspective, did the origins of this technological and communication revolution stand out so much as to warrant consideration as not just an independent sphere but yes, as an actual new society? I reference the metaphor of a "counter culture" from the socially radical period of the 1960's and in particular Theodore Rozak's book "The Making of a Counter Culture", 1968. It is true that that period evolved and fundamentally restructured our society. This can also be said of the evolution of ICTs. The question is were these movements so revolutionary to be similar in their degree and impact on society to provoke questions about how we have now arrived at a unique place in history where two tremendous culturally significant streams have become so confluent that they overlap? With what implications?

Initially one could conclude that "Technology is society made durable." as considered by Bruno Latour (1991:103). The meaning of durable is worth considering: enduring, historical, defined, discoverable over and over again." However, now that we are here, as David Byrne from the Talking Heads band says "How did I get here?" The only response that seems to make sense is what the Grateful Dead band's ballad reminds us all of: "What a long, strange trip it's been." And now, where are we going?