Whole Earth Access (1969–1998) started as a countercultural retail store in Berkeley, California . In the early 1990s, Whole Earth Access had seven stores in Northern California. After filing for bankruptcy in 1996, all stores closed in 1998.
67-638: The Whole Earth Catalog was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store", a 1963 Dodge truck. In 1968, the "Truck Store" finally settled into its permanent location in Menlo Park, California . In 1969, a store that was inspired by (but not financially connected with) the Whole Earth Catalog , called Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley . The store had the Leopold's Records Teletype Model 33 ASR which connected to
134-509: A Whole Seed Catalog, with a title and cover image inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog . Kevin Kelly, mentioned above for his role in editing later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog , maintains a web site—Cool-Tools.org—that publishes reviews of "the best/cheapest tools available. Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas." He also published
201-645: A 2 disc sample album The Whole Burbank Catalog . The cover parodied the publication's artwork. Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog . He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL , the Global Business Network , and the Long Now Foundation . He
268-422: A book and published Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto in 2009. The book examines how urbanization, nuclear power, genetic engineering , geoengineering , and wildlife restoration can be used as powerful tools in humanity's ongoing fight against global warming . In a 2019 interview, Brand described his perspective as "post-libertarian", indicating that at the time when the Whole Earth Catalog
335-472: A good overview of the available tools and resources, and for the word, and copies, to get out to everyone who needed them. From 1974 to 2003, the Whole Earth principals published a magazine, known originally as CoEvolution Quarterly . When the short-lived Whole Earth Software Review (a supplement to The Whole Earth Software Catalog ) failed, it was merged in 1985 with CoEvolution Quarterly to form
402-449: A great wave of convention-challenging experimentalism and a do-it-yourself attitude associated with "the counterculture," and tended to appeal not only to the intelligentsia of the movement, but to creative, hands-on, and outdoorsy people of many stripes. Some of the ideas in the Catalog were developed during Brand's visits to Drop City . With the Catalog opened flat, the reader might find
469-586: A large format book in 2013— Cool Tools A Catalog of Possibilities —which draws on the many reviews published over the years on that web site. The format, size, and style of the book reflect and pay homage to the original Whole Earth Catalog . In 1970, on April Fool's Day, the Whole Earth Restaurant opened at UC Santa Cruz . It was an early source of "whole foods" in Northern California until it closed in 2002. In 1972 Warner Bros. Records release
536-455: A previous project by Stewart Brand . In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, one of the first images of the "Whole Earth" . He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford -educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there
603-589: A quite featureless black vacuum." In late 1968, Brand assisted electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart with the Mother of All Demos , a presentation of many revolutionary computer technologies (including hypertext , email, and the mouse ) to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. Brand surmised that given the necessary consciousness, information, and tools, human beings could reshape
670-413: A range of speakers, including Brian Eno , Neal Stephenson , Vernor Vinge , Philip Rosedale , Jimmy Wales , Kevin Kelly , Clay Shirky , Ray Kurzweil , Bruce Sterling , and Cory Doctorow . The Long Now Foundation has worked with Jeff Bezos to build the 10,000 Year Clock. Brand is the subject of the 2021 documentary film We Are As Gods . Stewart Brand is the initiator or was involved with
737-696: A research project at Berkeley University and publish a feminist catalog inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog, the New Woman's Survival Catalog , which gathers feminist initiatives in different domains (art, communication, work, money, self-help , self-defense...) in the USA. In 1969, a store which was inspired by (but not financially connected with) The Whole Earth Catalog, called the Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley, California . It closed in 1998. In 1970
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#1732858932968804-521: A store called the "Whole Earth Provision Co.", inspired by the catalog, opened in Austin, Texas. It has six stores in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. In late 2006, Worldchanging released their 600-page compendium of solutions, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century , which Bill McKibben , in an article in the New York Review of Books called "The Whole Earth Catalog retooled for
871-913: A transcription of technology historian Lewis Mumford 's talk "The Next Transformation of Man", in which he stated that "man has still within him sufficient resources to alter the direction of modern civilization, for we then need no longer regard man as the passive victim of his own irreversible technological development". The content of CoEvolution Quarterly often included futurism or risqué topics. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something to say, Brand presented articles by many respected authors and thinkers, including Mumford, Howard T. Odum , Witold Rybczynski , Karl Hess , Orville Schell , Ivan Illich , Wendell Berry , Ursula K. Le Guin , Gregory Bateson , Amory Lovins , Hazel Henderson , Gary Snyder , Lynn Margulis , Eric Drexler , Gerard K. O'Neill , Peter Calthorpe , Sim Van der Ryn , Paul Hawken , John Todd , Kevin Kelly , and Donella Meadows . In
938-527: Is electronics and communications, which includes cameras, video, audio, and computers. Larry Farb commented in 1986 to the Los Angeles Times that, "we've grown up with our customers [...] the person who bought wood stoves in the 1970s is buying cappuccino makers today." In the early 1990s, the company opened four more stores in Northern California, contracting debts to finance the expansion. In 1992, its sales peaked at US$ 180 million. In 1995,
1005-650: Is something we do in common, interactively. The broad interpretation of "tool" coincided with that given by the designer, philosopher, and engineer Buckminster Fuller , though another thinker admired by Brand and some of his cohorts was Lewis Mumford , who had written about words as tools. Early editions reflected the considerable influence of Fuller, particularly his teachings about " whole systems ," " synergetics ," and efficiency or reducing waste. By 1971, Brand and his co-workers were already questioning whether Fuller's sense of direction might be too anthropocentric. New information arising in fields like ecology and biospherics
1072-516: Is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto . Brand was born in Rockford, Illinois , and attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He studied biology at Stanford University , graduating in 1960. As a soldier in the U.S. Army , he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in
1139-551: The Encyclopedia of Life . During 1986, Brand was a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab . Soon after, he became a private-conference organizer for such corporations as Royal Dutch Shell , Volvo , and AT&T . In 1988, he became a co‑founder of the Global Business Network , which became involved with the evolution and application of scenario thinking , planning, and complementary strategic tools. For fourteen years, Brand
1206-528: The Whole Earth Review (edited at different points by Jay Kinney , Kevin Kelly , and Howard Rheingold ), later called Whole Earth Magazine and finally just Whole Earth . The last issue, number 111 (edited by Alex Steffen ), was meant to be published in Spring 2003, but funds ran out. The Point Foundation , which owned Whole Earth , closed its doors later that year. The Whole Earth website continues
1273-621: The Community Memory Project SDS 940 mainframe computer . In 1978, two brothers, Larry and Gene Farb bought the Berkeley store on Shattuck avenue. The first store, located in an industrial area of Berkeley, sold various brand names sought after by young affluents at a discounted price. Salespersons were technology-savvy and knowledgeable of their products. Gene Farb managed electronics and photographic merchandise, Larry Farb managed hardware and appliances, Laura Katz (Larry's wife) ran
1340-631: The Contemporary Affairs category. It was the first time a catalog had ever won such an award. Brand's intent with the catalog was to provide education and "access to tools" so a reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." J. Baldwin was a young designer and instructor of design at colleges around the San Francisco Bay: San Francisco State University (then San Francisco State College),
1407-623: The San Francisco Art Institute , and the California College of the Arts (then California College of Arts and Crafts). As he recalled in the film Ecological Design (1994), "Stewart Brand came to me because he heard that I read catalogs. He said, 'I want to make this thing called a "whole Earth" catalog so that anyone on Earth can pick up a telephone and find out the complete information on anything. ... That's my goal.'" Baldwin served as
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#17328589329681474-572: The San Jose and Concord stores were closed. In 1996, Basic Living Products, the parent company of Whole Earth Access, closed the Foster City and Sacramento stores, and filed for bankruptcy protection. In November 1998, the three first and last stores of Whole Earth Access (Berkeley, San Rafael, and San Francisco) went out of business. Co-founder Gene Farb died three years later, in 2001. Whole Earth Catalog The Whole Earth Catalog ( WEC )
1541-462: The WEC legacy of concepts in popular discourse, medical self-care, community building, bioregionalism, environmental restoration, nanotechnology, and cyberspace. As of January 2022, the website appears to be offline. Recognizing the "developed country" focus of the original WEC, groups in several developing countries have created "catalogs" of their own to be more relevant to their countries. One such effort
1608-735: The Whole Earth Catalog were published by the Portola Institute . Brand and his wife, Lois, traveled to communes in a 1963 Dodge truck known as the Whole Earth Truck Store , which moved to a storefront in Menlo Park, California . That first oversized Catalog , and its successors in the 1970s and later, reckoned a wide assortment of things could serve as useful "tools": books, maps, garden implements, specialized clothing, carpenters' and masons ' tools, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers, and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" (written in
1675-571: The Whole Earth Catalog , quoting its farewell message: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish". To continue this work and also to publish full-length articles on specific topics in the natural sciences and invention, in numerous areas of the arts and the social sciences , and on the contemporary scene in general, Brand founded CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974, aimed primarily at educated laypeople. Brand never better revealed his opinions and reason for hope than when he ran, in CoEvolution Quarterly #4,
1742-432: The Whole Earth Catalog . It began by carrying books, a few woodstoves, a few power tools, and back-to-the-land equipment. Access to a wide variety of products was available at very low prices through special ordering from distributors' catalogs. Gradually the store began stocking the items most commonly ordered, and we now carry a wide range of top-quality products for basic living, still at very low prices. Our newest section
1809-706: The Whole Earth Software Catalog , a compendium for which Doubleday had bid $ 1.4 million for the trade paperback rights. The 1986 publication of The Essential Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-385-23641-7 ) preceded the 1989 Electronic Whole Earth Catalog on CD-ROM, which used HyperCard , an early form of hypermedia developed by Apple Computer . Dedicated editions were published for communications tools Signal in 1988, new age topics The Fringes of Reason in 1989, and ecological matters Whole Earth Ecolog in 1990. Published in 1994, The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-06-251059-2 )
1876-661: The 1960s. He and his second wife live on Mirene , a 64-foot (20 m)-long working tugboat . Built in 1912, the boat is moored in a former shipyard in Sausalito, California . He works in Mary Heartline , a grounded fishing boat about 100 yards (90 metres) away. One of his favorite items is a table on which Otis Redding is said to have written " (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay " (Brand acquired it from an antiques dealer in Sausalito). By
1943-512: The Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog . ... No topic was too esoteric, no degree of enthusiasm too ardent, no amateur expertise too uncertified to be included. ... This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the Whole Earth Catalogs disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the Whole Earth Catalogs did,
2010-690: The WEC, borrowed WEC production equipment for a week in 1970 and produced the first book on building geodesic domes . A year later, in 1971, Kahn again borrowed WEC equipment (an IBM Selectric Composer typesetting machine and a Polaroid MP-5 camera on an easel), and spent a month in the Santa Barbara Mountains producing Domebook 2 , which went on to sell 165,000 copies. With production of DB 2, Kahn and his company Shelter Publications followed Stewart Brand's move to nationwide distribution by Random House . In 1973, Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are part of
2077-647: The administration of California Governor Jerry Brown . In 1985, Brand and Larry Brilliant founded the WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link"), a prototypical, wide-ranging online community for informed participants the world over. The WELL won the 1990 Best Online Publication Award from the Computer Press Association . In 2000, Brand helped launch the All Species Foundation , which aimed to catalog all species of life on Earth. The project ceased functioning in 2007, transferring its mission to
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2144-756: The best tools and books the editors could find were collected and listed, along with images, reviews and uses, prices, and suppliers. The reader was also able to order some items directly through the catalog. Later editions changed a few of the headings, but generally kept the same overall framework. The Catalog used a broad definition of "tools". There were informative tools, such as books, maps, professional journals, courses, and classes. There were well-designed special-purpose utensils, including garden tools, carpenters' and masons' tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials, tents, hiking shoes, and potters' wheels. There were even early synthesizers and personal computers. The Catalog' s publication coincided with
2211-492: The chief editor of subjects in the areas of technology and design, both in the catalog itself and in other publications which arose from it. True to his 1966 vision, Brand's publishing efforts were suffused with an awareness of the importance of ecology , both as a field of study and as an influence upon the future of humankind and emerging human awareness. From the opening page of the 1969 Catalog : The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it,
2278-399: The early stance of emphasizing individualism should be replaced with one favoring community . He had originally written that "a realm of intimate, personal power is developing"; regarding this as important in some respects (to wit, the soon-emerging potentials of personal computing), Brand felt that the overarching project of humankind had more to do with living within natural systems, and this
2345-479: The engineering-efficiency tone of Fuller's ideas. The Whole Earth Epilog published in 1974 was intended as a "volume 2" to the Last Whole Earth Catalog , which itself was revised as The (Updated) Last Whole Earth Catalog in 1975. The Next Whole Earth Catalog ( ISBN 0-394-70776-1 ) in 1980 was well received, and an updated second edition followed in 1981. The 1980s also saw two editions of
2412-565: The ensuing years, Brand authored and edited a number of books on topics as diverse as computer-based media, the life history of buildings, and ideas about space colonies . He founded the Whole Earth Software Review , a supplement to the Whole Earth Software Catalog , in 1984. It merged with CoEvolution Quarterly to form the Whole Earth Review in 1985. From 1977 to 1979, Brand served as "special advisor" to
2479-520: The epicenter of an emerging counterculture, with the Summer of Love in 1967. Tom Wolfe includes Brand in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test . In 1966, while on an LSD trip on the roof of his house in North Beach, San Francisco , Brand became convinced that seeing an image of the whole Earth would change how we think about the planet and ourselves. He then campaigned to have NASA release
2546-507: The first (Fall 1968) edition of the Whole Earth Catalog . Later in 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders took an Earth photo, Earthrise , from Moon orbit, which became the front image of the spring 1969 edition of the Catalog . 1970 saw the first celebration of Earth Day . During a 2003 interview, Brand explained that the image "gave the sense that Earth's an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it's so graphic, this little blue, white, green and brown jewel-like icon amongst
2613-405: The first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. In subsequent issues, its production values gradually improved. Its outsize pages measured 11×14 inches (28×36 cm). Later editions were more than an inch thick. The early editions were published by the Portola Institute , headed by Richard Raymond. The so-called Last Whole Earth Catalog (June 1971) won the first U.S. National Book Award in
2680-431: The form of a letter to a friend) of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The information also described where these things could be located or purchased. The Catalog ' s publication coincided with the great wave of social and cultural experimentation, convention-breaking, and " do it yourself " attitude associated with the " counterculture ". The Whole Earth Catalog had widespread influence within
2747-601: The housewares and clothing departments, and Toni Garrett (Gene's wife) handled book sales and mail order. The store also built some of the computers it was selling, The second store opened in Marin County in 1982, and the third in San Francisco in 1985. According to a 1985 issue of the store's Whole Earth Access Mail Order Catalog, (named after, but not connected to the Whole Earth Catalog which it also sold): Our Berkeley store opened in 1969, inspired by but independent of
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2814-507: The iPod generation." The editor of Worldchanging has since acknowledged the Catalog as a prime inspiration. Whole Arctic Catalog was written by Pamela Richot and Published in Backet 3: At Extremes in 2015 to draw attention to threats to the arctic region specifically, similarly to how The Whole Earth Catalog drew attention to global environmental threats. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds publishes
2881-571: The international environmental ideology he had helped to develop. He wrote an article called "Environmental Heresies" in the May 2005 issue of the MIT Technology Review , in which he described what he considered necessary changes to environmentalism. He suggested, among other things, that environmentalists embrace nuclear power and genetically modified organisms as technologies with more promise than risk. Brand later developed these ideas into
2948-452: The large page on the left full of text and intriguing illustrations from a volume of Joseph Needham 's Science and Civilization in China , showing and explaining an astronomical clock tower or a chain-pump windmill, while on the right-hand page are a review of a beginners' guide to modern technology ( The Way Things Work ) and a review of The Engineers' Illustrated Thesaurus . On another spread,
3015-428: The last 1974 edition of the Catalog (#1180 October 1974 titled Whole Earth Epilog ) and makes it his own final recommendation: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." In 2009, Kevin Kelly stated: For this new countercultural movement , information was a precious commodity. In the '60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. ... [The WEC ] was a great example of user-generated content , without advertising, before
3082-438: The mid-1960s, Brand became associated with New York multimedia group USCO and Bay Area author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters . Brand co-produced the 1966 Trips Festival , an early effort blending rock music and light shows , with Kesey and Ramón Sender Barayón . The Trips Festival was among the first Grateful Dead performances in San Francisco. An estimated 10,000 hippies attended, and Haight-Ashbury soon emerged as
3149-525: The military had fostered his competence in organizing. A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute , photography at San Francisco State College , and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD with Myron Stolaroff 's International Foundation for Advanced Study, in Menlo Park, California . In 1966, he married mathematician Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American . Brand has lived in California since
3216-534: The point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG. The 1968 catalog divided itself into seven broad sections: Within each section,
3283-462: The rural back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the communities movement within many cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. The 1972 edition sold 1.5 million copies, winning the first U.S. National Book Award in the Contemporary Affairs category. Steve Jobs ended his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University by acknowledging both Stewart Brand and
3350-641: The slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead, the vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. This is why, while not a regularly published periodical, numerous editions and updates were required to keep price and availability information up to date. In his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech , Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to "a sort of Google in paperback form, before Google came along." The title Whole Earth Catalog came from
3417-470: The summer of 1969 while on a conservation speaking tour out west," where the Sierra Club was active, and where young minds had been broadened and stimulated by such influences as the catalog. Despite this popular and critical success, particularly among a generation of young hippies and survivalists, the catalog was not intended to continue in publication for long, just long enough for the editors to complete
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#17328589329683484-424: The then-rumored satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space. He sold and distributed buttons for 25 cents each, asking, "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" During this campaign, Brand met Richard Buckminster Fuller , who offered to help Brand with his projects. In 1967, a satellite, ATS-3 , took the photo. Brand thought the image of our planet would be a powerful symbol; it adorned
3551-467: The truck, hoping to tour the country doing educational fairs. The truck was not only a store, but also an alternative lending library and a mobile microeducation service. Kevin Kelly , who would edit later editions of the catalog, summarizes the very early history this way: 'Here's a tool that will make drilling a well, or grinding flour, easier,' Brand would tell [the hippies,] pointing it out in his catalog of recommended tools. But his best selling tool
3618-473: The user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed: CATALOG listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff. We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to
3685-469: The verso reviews books on accounting and moonlighting jobs, while the recto bears an article in which people tell the story of a community credit union they founded. Another pair of pages depict and discuss different kayaks, inflatable dinghies, and houseboats. The catalog was published sporadically after 1972. An important shift in philosophy in the Catalogs occurred in the early 1970s, when Brand decided that
3752-568: The web does better. Looking back and discussing attitudes evident in the early editions of the catalog, Brand wrote, "At a time when the New Left was calling for grassroots political (i.e., referred) power, Whole Earth eschewed politics and pushed grass-roots direct power—tools and skills." As an early indicator of the general Zeitgeist, the catalog's first edition preceded the original Earth Day by nearly two years. The idea of Earth Day occurred to Senator Gaylord Nelson , its instigator, "in
3819-447: The world they had made (and were making) for themselves into something environmentally and socially sustainable. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, about 10 million Americans were involved in living communally . In 1968, using the most basic approaches to typesetting and page layout, Brand and his colleagues created issue number one of the Whole Earth Catalog , employing the subtitle "access to tools". Early editions of
3886-468: Was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be. Andrew Kirk in Counterculture Green notes that the Whole Earth Catalog was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store" which was a 1963 Dodge truck. In 1968, Brand, who was then 29, and his wife Lois embarked "on a commune road trip" with
3953-403: Was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency , ecology , alternative education , " do it yourself " (DIY), and holism , and featured
4020-592: Was an adaptation of the WEC (called the "Liklik Buk") written and published in the late 1970s in Papua New Guinea; by 1982 this had been enlarged, updated, and translated (as "Save Na Mekem") into the Pidgin language used throughout Melanesia , and updates of the English "Liklik Buk" were published in 1986 and 2003. In the United States, the book Domebook One was a direct spin-off of the WEC. Lloyd Kahn , Shelter editor of
4087-416: Was being written, he did not fully understand the significance of the role of government in the development of technology and engineering. In his environmental position, he self-describes as an "eco-pragmatist". Brand is co‑chair and president of the board of directors of the Long Now Foundation and chairs the foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking . This series on long-term thinking has presented
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#17328589329684154-539: Was on the board of the Santa Fe Institute (founded in 1984), an organization devoted to "fostering a multidisciplinary scientific research community pursuing frontier science". He has also continued to promote the preservation of tracts of wilderness. The Whole Earth Catalog implied an ideal of human progress that depended on decentralized, personal, and liberating technological development—so‑called "soft technology". However, in 2005, Brand criticized aspects of
4221-473: Was persuasive. By the mid-1970s, much of the Buddhist economics viewpoint of E. F. Schumacher , as well as the activist interests of the biological species preservationists , had tempered the overall enthusiasm for Fuller's ideas in the catalog. Still later, the amiable-architecture ideas of people like Christopher Alexander and similar community-planning ideas of people like Peter Calthorpe further tempered
4288-439: Was placed at the back of the catalog, hampering a valuable Catalog function: nudging publishers to keep seminal works in print . Three books were serialized in the pages of the WEC, printing a couple of paragraphs per page. This made reading the catalog a page-by-page experience. Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech . When I
4355-556: Was subtitled Access to Tools and Ideas for the Twenty-First Century . A slender 30th Anniversary Celebration was published in 1998 as part of Issue 95 of the Whole Earth magazine ( ISSN 0749-5056 ), reprinting the original WEC along with new material. An important edit to this reprint was a limitation placed by book publishers who "begged" the Catalog not to promote titles they no longer carry. All such information
4422-469: Was the catalog itself, annotated by him, featuring tools that didn't fit into his truck. The "Truck Store" finally settled into its permanent location in Menlo Park , California . Instead of bringing the store to the people, Brand decided to create "accumulatively larger versions of his tool catalog" and sell it by mail so the people could contact the vendors directly. Using the most basic typesetting and page-layout tools, Brand and his colleagues created
4489-400: Was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog , which was one of the bibles of my generation ... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Then at the very end of this commencement speech Jobs quotes explicitly the farewell message placed on the back cover of
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