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

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Des­jardins asks “Need a lit­tle Tol­stoy while you’re wait­ing in line? How about some Mark Twain on the sub­way? Booksin­my­phone puts — sur­prise! — books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to down­load clas­sics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.  

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