Silicon Valley expert traces Burning Man’s impact on tech

Amid the artists and free thinkers of the Burning Man festival are thousands of information technologists, computer programmers, and Silicon Valley executives who incorporate parts of the experience into their work cultures, according to Fred Turner.

Every August, fire-breathing dancers, costumed performers, and free-thinking artists gather in the Nevada desert to celebrate Burning Man, a countercultural event devoted to communal living, radical art, and self-expression.

Turner, a professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, has studied Burning Man’s appeal within the tech industry for over a decade. In a 2009 paper in New Media & Society, Turner described how the event has become a key site for product ideation for the Bay Area’s tech industries.

Turner has also argued that elements of the Burning Man world—such as its principles of participation, communal effort, and radical inclusion—have driven the collaborative work culture celebrated within Silicon Valley tech firms. For many working in the industry and elsewhere, Burning Man’s principles offer a new type of spirituality akin to the early Puritan settlers, Turner says.

Here, Turner discusses his research on Burning Man, the people who follow Burning Man’s principles (also known as “Burners”), and the event’s influence in the tech industry.

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