
Fiftieth anniversary of Whole Earth Catalog - walterbell
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-markoff-stewart-brand-whole-earth-catalog-20180328-story.html
======
natch
The Whole Earth Catalog was like a preview of the World Wide Web, before the
WWW existed. It was the best thing going back then, as far as ways to discover
interesting things and, along with its companion publication Coevolution
Quarterly (and later Whole Earth Review), ideas.

Also as an aside, Kevin Kelly, who is still producing interesting material
today ([http://kk.org](http://kk.org)), ran the magazine for a while, during
which time he was developing the vision for what became Wired magazine. This
was around the time of the software catalogs and in the early days of the
Well. There's an edition of the Whole Earth Catalog called "Signal" which was
essentially a preview of Wired, before some people with money came in and
claimed credit for founding it... I think he is still given credit as a co-
founder but he was the visionary and instigator who made it happen.

[Edit: I see in his own bio he says: "In 1992 I joined a small team which
launched Wired magazine in January 1993." LOL! That's insanely modest. In
around Spring of 1987 I sat with him in an office at Whole Earth Review while
he described this magazine he wanted to do, a larger format magazine, breaking
some size rules, with bright colors, bold, creative layout, and lots of
experimentation with creative or just plain abusive typography, focused on
tech and the culture around it... Signal had to rely on the older printing
technology so it didn't have the color aspects as I recall but the vision he
described in that meeting was 100% Wired magazine.]

~~~
natch
Another interesting tidbit about that KK meeting is J Baldwin was in the room,
and when Kevin described the idea of it being about tech, culture and the
people doing it, J Baldwin grumbled an objection that he would rather see the
focus be on the tech, not on the people. I gather J didn’t like the idea of a
gossipy, rock-star producing type of magazine that would give you more
personal stories and less juicy details about the tech. I got the feeling KK’s
view was more on the people side though not full-bore gossipy fortunately.
They didn’t flesh out the two sides of this at that moment.

------
my_first_acct
The author of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, also participated in the
Mother of All Demos [1], whose 50th anniversary is coming up this December. A
busy year for him.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)

~~~
gnodar
The cover of the whole earth publication features a photograph of the earth.
The first photograph of earth from space, which he campaigned for. A busy year
indeed.

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jonah-archive
A couple in the archive that might be interesting to HN -- the Whole Earth
Software Catalogs from the mid-1980s:

[https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_198...](https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_1984_Point)

[https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_for...](https://archive.org/details/Whole_Earth_Software_Catalog_for_1986_1985_Point)

And of course, the classic Last Whole Earth Catalog:

[https://archive.org/details/B-001-013-719](https://archive.org/details/B-001-013-719)

------
dolguldur
If you want to hear more about the background and Stewart Brand as a person,
Tim Ferris interviewed him recently: [https://tim.blog/2017/11/21/stewart-
brand/](https://tim.blog/2017/11/21/stewart-brand/)

------
oldmancoyote
It's worth mentioning that the Whole Earth Catalogue was not just a creation
of Brand and his colleagues. It was often based on reviews submitted by
readers.

For my generation it was _OUR_ Whole Earth Catalogue. That was hugely
important in making a sense of community that supported the book.

------
bittercynic
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend checking out one of the old catalogs.
The writing has an infectious spirit of hope and enthusiasm.

~~~
itronitron
I used to own two. This is a great reference book and has a wide variety of
interesting material, lots of interesting stories in addition to being a
'tools' catalog.

------
rasmi
Great MoMA exhibit here:
[https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/AccesstoT...](https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/AccesstoTools/)

------
OrganicMSG
I still read The Well (The Whole Earth 'Lectronic 'Link) at least once a year,
as I have an almost religious addiction to "The State of The World" with Bruce
Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky. For reference, here is State of the World 2018 -
[https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/503/State-
of...](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/503/State-of-the-
World-2018-Bruce-St-page01.html)

------
homarp
Stewart Brand is now hosting Seminars at the Long Now Foundation
[http://longnow.org/](http://longnow.org/)

RSS feed at
[http://longnow.org/projects/seminars/SALT.xml](http://longnow.org/projects/seminars/SALT.xml)

------
mkempe
I posted the same a couple of days ago. I thought a story of the Whole Earth
Catalog --written by a really good journalist, John Markoff-- would have been
a perfect match for HN, but apparently not.

Do many HN readers even know about Stewart Brand?

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. I love browsing through a copy of the last issue.

~~~
grzm
> _" I thought a story [about X] would have been a perfect match for HN, but
> apparently not."_

Take a step back and think about the variables involved in any given
submission getting significant uptake. A few off the top of my head:

\- does it get noticed? (and there's a bunch of factors that contribute to why
it might get noticed)

\- does it get upvoted?

\- what other posts are submitted at around the same time?

\- is it a good fit for HN?

Only one of those is fit. It's not uncommon for pieces to be submitted
multiple times before finally getting a lot of upvotes. I wouldn't jump to any
conclusions about fitness based on such limited data.

FWIW, Kevin Kelly ( _Wired_ , The Well, _Cool Tools_ ) was one of the later
editors of the publication as well, a name that might be more familiar to some
HN members.

~~~
mkempe
That's a bit of hand-waving to get to the crux: the current HN collective is
mostly unaware of recent decades, and does not care for it. Unless one makes a
pandering connection with some name visible in the present day. It's a sad
state.

There have been some HN stories about the Long Now foundation, which would be
a simple, present path for readers to know about Stewart Brand. But these
stories weren't popular either.

Edit: observations are not assumptions. Bemoaning the sad state of the world
is normal when you observe intellectual or moral decay.

~~~
grzm
Let's stop making assumptions about "the collective", shall we? Submit
articles you think are interesting, and make substantial comments that
contribute and promote interesting discussion. Bemoaning the "sad state" of
whatever doesn't help one single bit (and comes off poorly as well). The
guidelines ask us not to complain that a submission is inappropriate: I think
that likely goes for complaining about a submission's reception in general.

You can only control what you yourself do. I regularly review my comments to
see how they've contributed constructively to discussion: and that's not just
by looking at their vote tallies. Sometimes I'm not happy with what I've done,
and I try to do better. Are there responses at all? Are there substantive
follow ups? Are the responses worse? A pet peeve of mine are the large number
of snarky rhetorical questions that poke at others' comments rather than
charitably teasing out the heart, and make stronger followups. Complaining
about that would only make people defensive, which would make things worse.

Constructive comments make for better discussion make for better participation
which makes for better submissions and better comments. Focus on what you can
do, and do it.

