Between 1968 and 1972, Stewart Brand published The Whole Earth Catalog. For Kevin Kelly, the Catalog was essentially "a paper-based database offering thousands of hacks, tips, tools, suggestions, and possibilities for optimizing your life." For Steve Jobs, it was a "Bible" of his generation, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along. (On a side note, I highly recommend the commencement speech where Jobs made those comments.) The very good news is that The Whole Earth Catalog and some related publications are now available online. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee. Start delving into things here.
While we're on this subject, I should also highlight a project that has more recently occupied Stewart Brand's time. The Seminars About Long Term Thinking is a monthly speaking series hosted by Brand and organized by the Long Now Foundation, which hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and to promote “slower/better” thinking. You can access the thought-provoking seminars as a podcast (iTunes - Feed - Web Site) and otherwise find it hosted in our Ideas & Culture Podcast Collection. Have a good weekend.
via Boing Boing
“In the beginning, Stewart Brand created the Whole Earth Catalog. And the earth was without the web, google or blogging (which the Whole Earth Catalog is credited with inspiring). Steve Jobs described it as “an amazing publication… 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”. ” Emma Ridgeway on Arts & Ecology blog at http://mtblog.typepad.com/arts_ecology
[…] The Whole Earth Catalog Now Online […]
[…] foolish,” a line from The Whole Earth Catalog, the Bible of Steve Jobs’ generation, which became freely available online back in 2009… […]
[…] Kelly, the co-founder of Wired magazine and former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog (now free online), published a new book this past October: What Technology Wants. Reviewing his own book on […]
in the cold war days and no pc’s the catalog became the guardian of technology.
[…] Kelly, the co-founder of Wired magazine and former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog (now free online), published a new book this past October: What Technology Wants. Reviewing his own book on […]
[…] Kelly, web-pioneer, co-founder of Wired Magazine, former editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, and one of the best all-around living arguments for ditching college and traveling the world […]
I am seeking to obtain a copy of an article in WEC written by noteworthy playright Ken Kesey about a visit to the
Sutro Tunnel Saloon in Nevada. It was supposedly in the “first supplement” to
WEC but I don’t see supplements listed as
that, and perhaps it is included in #1050
with the Kesey bus race bits? I would be
very grateful to obtain such a copy.
Mike Gerald
Wondering what the whole earth catalog is about but I am interested in the hacks, tips, tools, suggestions and possibilities for optimizing life.
david vincent.
it support surrey…
[…]The Whole Earth Catalog Now Online | Open Culture[…]…
Self Help Guides Advice…
[…]The Whole Earth Catalog Now Online | Open Culture[…]…
I have a 1972 edition of the Last Whole Earth Catalog. It is in very very good condition. If anyone is interested in the catalog please feel free to contact me through e-mail. It is the most interesting catalog ever published. Steve Jobs was right it was the Google of our time.
I would be very grateful, if you could (where possible) kindly send me either a hard copy or electronic copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue.
I could be reached, by posts, at the address:
Assoc. Prof. P. Tarpowah Kear, Jr.
Professional Officer for Pharmacy
Dept. of Human Resources for Health Development
West African Health Organsation (WAHO)
175 Ave. Ouezzin Coulibaly
01 BP 153 BOBO-DIOULASSO 01
Burkina Faso
Im fascinated with what it contains please send electronic copy
I am going to try to start a Habitat for Salt Spring Island org. I need the Whole Earth Catalog in it’s entirety, how can I get copies of this or is it on disk or can I download all publications. Please help if you can. Kathryn Rose Emerson
Hi. I wonder if Ken Kesey’s piece entitled the Great Bus Race (May 1974) is available on line? If not, the relevant page numbers would be useful.
Thanks,
Ben Klein
Back in the 70’s, I used a Whole Earth Catalog to build a geodesic dome out of 2×4’s. Any chance of your knowing where I might find the article? Thanks, WesD (wes_jean@comcast.net) 509.533.6891
Back in the 70’s, I used a Whole Earth Catalog to build a geodesic dome out of 2×4’s. Any chance of your knowing where I might find the article? Thanks, WesD 509.533.6891
And don’t miss, on the lower right corner of page 310 (312 on the toolbar; zoom till you see “How to Need a Catalog”)
https://archive.org/details/B-001-013-719/page/n311/mode/2up
https://ia801609.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/10/items/B-001-013-719/B-001-013-719_jp2.zip&file=B-001-013-719_jp2/B-001-013-719_0311.jp2&scale=1&rotate=0
of The Last Whole Earth Catalog from 1971, the cult-classic “Widow Woman Letter” introduced within by editor Stewart Brand:
Wendell Berry says this letter is a fugue, it’s a real letter written by a man who says what he means. It came to us through Gurney Norman. – SB
From the introduction by the Kentucky writer Gurney Norman (Divine Right’s Trip, &c.) to the version published earlier in the Bay area alternative paper The Free You (Midpeninsula Free University), Vol. 3, No. 1, January 1969
http://midpeninsulafreeu.com/images/82.pdf
http://midpeninsulafreeu.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpeninsula_Free_University
Editor’s note: this is an actual letter sent some years ago to a movie-star magazine in New York by a man in a mental hospital in a southwestern state. It has not been edited, except to leave out the man’s name and address. G.N.
I was listening to Steve Job’s Standford commencement speech where in he mentioned about the Last Whole Earth Catalog hence I wanted to read them