Beatnik is a term for an anti-materialistic culture of people in the late 1950s analogous to [[hippies]] a decade later. The term was coined by Herb Caen on April 2, 1958 in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. He modified an earlier, more positive term Beat Generation and added the -nik suffix from [[Sputnik]], which had launched in the prior six months. | Beatnik is a term for an anti-materialistic culture of people in the late 1950s analogous to [[hippies]] a decade later. The term was coined by Herb Caen on April 2, 1958 in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. He modified an earlier, more positive term Beat Generation and added the -nik suffix from [[Sputnik]], which had launched in the prior six months. |