In 1968, as a generation of long-hairs headed “back to the land,” Stewart Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog to give them the tools they’d need to get there. Steve Jobs said it was "like Google in paperback form," but pouring over the black and white newsprint, Brand’s work of drama, led to epiphanies of an era no website will ever invoke. It gave us our whole future. Recently, Stewart Brand published a new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. A lifelong ecologist and futurist… controversial, determined and productive, Brand has something important to say. He went to Stanford, he served the US Army, the Merry Pranksters, Jerry Brown, and the Santa Fe Institute and he founded The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. I bought the book. I’m going to see if I have an inner ecopragmatist.
Then I’ll pass it to my daughter, an urban planner in rural Eastern Oregon. She dismays over the spread of the west, productive land being laced with pavement and plumbing. She’ll find much to learn from and concur with in this book. She’s a smart gal, Brand’s a smart guy. The exchange of ideas, even unspoken, between generations of clever and conscious people is encouraging.
In our cabin, the Whole Earth Catalog joined Be Here Now on the barnwood shelf. What book sat next to your copy?
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