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January 14, 1992: Tens of thousands of artists, techies, politicians, and counterculture icons converged in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a Silicon Valley event unlike anything the industry has seen, before or since.

Organizers called it the “Digital Be-In” — a play on 1967's “Human Be-In,” which featured Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary in what was one of the highwater marks for the hippie movement. Described at the time by Soledad O'Brien as where “90s cyberculture meets 60s counterculture,” attendees of the Digital Be-In dropped acid, danced to bad techno, dropped more acid, and witnessed the latest in digital innovation: from virtual reality booths to a strange new form of information technology known as the Internet.

The guestlist was wild. Famed psychologist and psychedelic drug advocate Leary teleconferenced in from Hawaii. San Francisco mayor Willie Brown made an appearance. Rockers Todd Rundgren and Graham Nash of Crosby Stills Nash & Young were supposedly hanging around somewhere. And among the high-profile corporate sponsors was none other than Apple Computers.

“Most people are not really aware of this era because, when the Internet hit, that was pretty much the beginning of the digital age for most of the world,” said Digital Be-In organizer and Verbum Magazine founder Michael Gosney at Pando's Don't Be Awful event. “But it was a very fertile time. And, as have many of the phases of technology evolution, it was influenced greatly by the Bay Area culture. And the whole history here of the counterculture was very relevant to the early emergence of the whole cyberculture movement. And our Digital Be-In event was kind of an embodiment of that connection.”