Stewart Brand is perhaps best known for his iconic counterculture magazine The Whole Earth Catalog. Published from 1968 to 1971, the catalog, which offered essays and product reviews, sold millions of copies and won the National Book Award in 1972. In the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John Markoff, it was a 鈥渕osaic of crazy stuff,鈥� from computers to how to make granola and everything in between.
A veteran chronicler of technology and the rise of Silicon Valley, Markoff spoke about his new biography, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, with award-winning journalist Nicole Perlroth in a 91自拍 Live event on March 31, 2022.
Stewart Brand and his then-wife Lois Jennings first set out to create a 鈥渢ruck store.鈥� The idea was to deliver books and tools to friends who were living 1960s-era alternative lifestyles on communes. But they discovered that their friends didn鈥檛 have any money, so they pivoted to producing a catalog instead. It reached a much broader audience than the back-to-the-earth community.
In his 2005 commencement address at Stanford, Steve Jobs called the Whole Earth Catalog one of the 鈥渂ibles鈥� of his generation, 鈥渟ort of like Google in paperback form . . . overflowing with neat tools and great notions.鈥� The farewell message on the back cover of the last issue, 鈥淪tay hungry, stay foolish,鈥� became his personal mantra.
Despite his catalog鈥檚 impact on a new generation of technologists, Brand himself stumbled into the world of computing in 1962. He would be linked to technology for the next fifty years鈥攆or good and bad.
John Markoff explains how Brand connected with the hacker community.
From 1965 to 1975, says Markoff, Menlo Park, where Brand lived, was the center of a circle that encompassed everything important in the computing world. Like Florence during the Renaissance, technology, politics, and culture all collided there to change the world. And Stuart Brand was right in the middle of it.
Hired in 1967 to create an educational technology fair at the San Mateo County fairgrounds, Brand spent six months trying to raise money before giving up the project. Markoff notes that the funding proposal reads like it is describing the Maker Faire that happened 40 years later in the same location. While his friends went back to the land, Brand was focused on tech鈥檚 future.
John Markoff describes the "universal tool."
Brand would later become the first to use the phrase 鈥減ersonal computer鈥� in the modern sense. In 1971, he wrote a seminal article for Rolling Stone magazine, which conveyed for the first time that new technologies like personal computing and networking would have a broad impact on regular people.
But Brand turned away from computing in the dot.com era when 鈥渋nformation wants to be free鈥� was used as an out-of-context rallying cry for tech disruption. He was aware of the double-bind that information wants to be free but also expensive because it is so valuable.
Instead, Brand got involved in a project to build a 10,000 year clock (the 鈥渃entury hand鈥� advances every 100 years), as a symbol of long-term thinking to counter tech鈥檚 acceleration of everything. Such admonitions were not well-received by the hacker community.
Like Markoff, Nicole Perlroth grew up in Silicon Valley and found numerous connections to Stewart Brand in her life. 鈥淗e鈥檚 like the wizard behind everything we see and do in Silicon Valley,鈥� she says. Markoff, too, had the sense that Brand was frequently showing up, Forrest Gump-like, in the middle of things and in his own life.
John Markoff remembers life in Stewart Brand鈥檚 neighborhood.
It鈥檚 hard to identify exactly why Stewart Brand saw the future before everyone else. Markoff noted that from an early age Brand chose not to compete with 鈥渢he smart kids鈥� by exploring outside the usual boundaries. He鈥檚 very well-read and gets bored quickly so he鈥檚 always moving on to something new. His oldest friends nicknamed him 鈥淪crewy Stewie鈥� because he had so many ideas.
In any case, now in his 80s, Brand makes for a fascinating biographical subject. Markoff took on the project, reading all Brand鈥檚 journals and talking to him 76 times over the course of writing the book. Research could be a challenge, particularly with the transition to the digital world and the way people communicated changed. Emails literally disappeared.
Other issues with digital communications surfaced early on. In 1985, Brand launched The WELL, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, an online community like an early Twitter. Perlroth noted that perhaps it should have served as a warning about what could happen on social media platforms.
John Markoff describes the dark side of early social media.
For a person with so many ideas, there were bound to be some that didn鈥檛 work. And Brand was always evolving; he considers himself a pragmatist. His stance on nuclear power, for example, changed when he became convinced that it was necessary to combat the compressed timeframe of climate change. That stance was not popular with the environmental movement.
So, what is Brand thinking about today while he鈥檚 鈥渓iving small鈥� on a boat in Sausalito? In addition to being involved with Revive & Restore, a project to combat species extinction, he鈥檚 working on a new book. It鈥檚 about maintenance. We may want to listen when Stewart Brand says that鈥檚 the future.
Stewart Brand and Silicon Valley's Soul | 91自拍 Live, March 31, 2022
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