Utopian Dreaming--50 years of Imagined Futures in California and at UCSC

In 2015, UCSC is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia its 40th. Both are products of a fertile period of ferment across California, during the 1960s and 1970s. Why has California been such a fertile and fruitful site for “Utopian Dreaming,” in film, fiction, media, design, architecture, mobility, electronics, intentional communities,ecology and environment, counter-culture and social movements? What kinds of futures has California come to represent? What has been the role of UCSC in these imaginaries of the future. Does California remain a Promised Land, or is it a Land of Squandered Promise?