THE CUTTING EDGE: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Tuning In to ‘60s Love, Haight : Cyberspace: A new CD-ROM allows a peek at that innocent yet powerful time when the Grateful Dead got its start.

The death last week of Grateful Dead founder Jerry Garcia and the grieving of his many fans has brought renewed interest in the ‘60s and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, where the band got its start. But TV interviews with musicians and fans provide only a small glimpse of what really happened during this tumultuous period. You can get a far more in-depth look by running the “rockumentary” CD-ROM “Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties” ($49.95). The two-disc set produced by Rockument ([707] 884-4413 or tony@rockument.com) is distributed by Comptons NewMedia and was released June 24--more than a month before Garcia’s death of an apparent heart attack.

The program takes you back to that innocent yet powerful time when the Grateful Dead was playing free concerts in Golden Gate Park and Harvard professor Timothy Leary was urging young folks to “tune in, turn on and drop out.” The program contains 44 minutes of Grateful Dead music plus a 1966 video interview with the band.

But there was far more to that period than new musical expression. It was also a time when political activists around the world were organizing against the Vietnam War and fighting for civil rights. The CD set views the era from a small strip of San Francisco real estate, but it helps explain the entire period.

This multimedia program brings the period into a perspective that would be impossible with a book or even a videotape. You can’t smell the incense, but you can hear the music, read the literature and get a sense of the lives of the people of the Haight.

The program employs Leary’s mantra as an organizational scheme for users exploring the period. The “Turn On” portion of the program is a slide show and series of videos about the history of Haight-Ashbury narrated by Allen Cohen, editor of the San Francisco Oracle (published from 1966 to 1988). “Tune In” is a reference section where you can read articles and poetry from the Oracle and look at video interviews. “Drop Out” is a self-described “groovy” game.

There were no music videos in the ‘60s, but the CD’s producer, Tony Bove, has improvised by showing period news footage and slides with background music from the Dead, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. The sound with the video and photos definitely brought me back.

Aside from the Dead interview, there are others with luminaries such as Leary, the late yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, singer Paul McCartney, and Dr. David Smith, director of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.

A 1987 interview with actor Peter Coyote (an activist during the ‘60s) puts the period into perspective: “I very much resent the kind of media-induced collaboration which tries to pass off the ‘60s as a drug-induced euphoria and a failure. . . . Most of the people I know that are still living are carrying on their work.”

The reading material on the disc, mainly excerpts from the Oracle, includes Cohen’s 1966 essay “Notes of a Dirty Bookseller,” which, in light of recent congressional efforts to censor the Internet, seems eerily relevant today.

Another Oracle piece, “Viet GI Speaks Out,” is sadly prophetic about the wounds of some Vietnam vets. “A great part of the next 20 years will involve shutting the door completely on this part of their lives,” the 1966 article said. Later the interviewer asked the GI “whether South Vietnam would go Communist if we pulled out.” “Oh Communist, Communist,” came the accurate reply.

Bove manages to throw in some ‘60s advice for dealing with a decidedly ‘90s problem: the time delay while the CD-ROM loads data. You’re advised to “Be Cool While Loading!” as you wait for the show to start. While the computer loads in cover art from the Oracle, the screen reads “Loading Images From the Disc. Patience Is a Virtue.”

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The “Drop Out” game comes complete with psychedelic graphics, intermittent videos and a great soundtrack. However, the game itself held my interest for only a few minutes. You travel around a game board, dealing with the joys and hassles of living in the Haight in the ‘60s, as you strive toward food and shelter points on your way to enlightenment. If you’re lucky, you “find a place to crash for the night.” Or you could “arrive high on bad acid! All the food looks like Spiro Agnew and starts laughing at you, so you stuff it all down the garbage disposal and lose 3 food and shelter points.” Thanks for the memories.

Users of the Internet’s World Wide Web can visit Rockument’s home page (https://www.ROCKUMENT.COM/) for sample material and a link to sites about the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

Lawrence J. Magid can be e-mailed at magid@latimes.com or at https://www.omix.com/magid on the World Wide Web.