It was this enormous potential of the Internet to democratize the flow of information and empower anyone with a computer that made me decide to sell my computer business and invest the proceeds into an Internet venture.

I created my first website as a personal statement about my decision to reject the prevailing business mindset and a rediscovery of those values that I cherished during my younger days.

Back in the 70s I was a peaceful pot-smoking vegan, working in hippie cooperatives in the Pacific Northwest. We might not have been able to change the whole world, but we could certainly remodel our day-to-day lives to reflect our priorities.

In that spirit I felt I could once again reorder my life to conform with my own rebirth and freedom from the stressful business world. To create my new website, I first listed those things I felt a renewed spark to write about. Things I really felt strongly about, including peace, love, spirituality, the environment, cannabis, what really went down in the 1960s, psychedelics, vegetarianism, etc.

Reviewing that list, I had a sudden realization that I was STILL a hippie after all these years, and so I decided to create Hippy.com as a place to store my thoughts on these subjects. I never expected it to succeed as it has. In fact I thought only a few old hippies would find it and enjoy discussing the good ol' freak daze.

It quickly became apparent that not only were LOTS of people searching for this information, but most of them were young people who weren't alive during the 60s. Students, long-haired teenagers and even preteen wannabe hippies were flooding the site with questions about the original Hippie Movement. Like me, many wanted to rekindle the spirit and get it going again.

To answer all those questions, and to set the record straight, I felt compelled to write a book on the subject. I noticed the media had rewritten the history of the 1960s to blame everything wrong with society on hippies and liberals - and they still do! So Hippies from A to Z was published and sold out (it's available online here for free!).

Now, after 10 years we can look back and see that we have INDEED succeeded in restoring the hippie mindset to our consumer driven society, even to the point of freeing the word "hippie" from it's media imposed derogatory definition. We even helped put the words "hip" and "cool" back into the public vernacular as those words were very uncool in the business obsessed 90s.

And more importantly we have succeeded in uniting hippies from around the world and activating their lives with the hope that we hippies can change the world together!

With the planet facing its most difficult challenges, severe crises that affect everyone, we all must spread our love and enlightenment to the masses. We have a virtual movement online and a real movement happening again in the world's streets. As we come together this summer, let's send peaceful waves of love to the universe. We CAN still make a difference!

Peace & Love to ALL!
Skip Stone
July 1, 2006