Cyberdelic refers to immersion in cyberspace as a psychedelic experience; the fusion of cyberculture and the psychedelic subculture; psychedelic art created by calculating fractal objects; and trance music parties. Timothy Leary, an advocate of psychedelic drug use who became a cult figure of the hippies in the 1960s, reemerged in the 1980s as a spokesperson of the cyberdelic counterculture, whose adherents called themselves ‘cyberpunks,’ and became one of the most philosophical promoters of personal computers, the Internet, and immersive virtual reality. Leary proclaimed that the ‘PC is the LSD of the 1990s’ and admonished bohemians to ‘turn on, boot up, jack in.’
In contrast to the hippies of the 60s who were decidedly antiscience and antitechnology, the cyberpunks of the 80s and 90s ecstatically embraced technology and the hacker ethic. They believed that high technology (and smart drugs) could help human beings overcome all limits, that it could liberate them from authority and even enable them to transcend space, time, and body. They often expressed their ethos and aesthetics through cyberart and reality hacking.