(or, how to save the world by thinking long-term)
Anyone growing up around environmentally aware adults between 1968 and 1998 will have seen a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog. Published by San Francisco eco-activist, Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog was huge, both physically and philosophically. Printed on tabloid sized 11×14 inch paper, some editions were over an inch thick.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs credits the Whole Earth Catalog as a conceptual forerunner of the search engine. Indeed, it was Brand’s desire to help people find any information they might find useful to themselves that inspired him to publish the massive catalog. Jobs’ comment fits well with a more famous one attributed to Brand, “Information wants to be free.†Unfortunately, the cost of publishing the Whole Earth Catalog forced him to charge $4 per issue, a significant sum of money at the time.
Stewart Brand has always found himself slightly ahead of his peers in his thinking and in the products of his work. As a magazine publisher in the mid-1970’s, Brand fostered or introduced many of the most respected voices in modern American literature including, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gary Snyder, Lewis Mumford, Karl Hess, and the future editor of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly.
A decade earlier, Brand’s LSD inspired light-shows had been immortalized by Tom Wolfe in the first chapters of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Twenty-two years ago, in 1985 he and Larry Brilliant (now Executive Director of Google’s philanthropic initiative Google.org) founded one of the first online communities known as The WELL. Now operated by Salon.com, The WELL is the oldest existing gathering place on the Net.
Throughout his life’s work, three consistent threads can be found. The first is in his adventurous approach to society. Brand is the quintessential early adopter, one who’s innovations serve as models for others to build on long after Brand himself has moved on to something equally fascinating. Brand has an uncanny track record of developing on and off-line publications that change the world. Brand is a leading visionary.
A second thread is Brand’s stark and passionate understanding of the devastation happening to the planet’s ecosystems. Though the environmental movement existed long before the 1960’s, Brand helped explain and popularize it in the 1970’s, expand it in the 80’s, and sustain it through the 90’s. Brand is a leading environmentalist.
That brings us to the third consistent thread in Brand’s life and work, that of a technologist. Brand, who served as a consultant to then California governor Jerry Brown, has been a visiting scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, worked with Royal Dutch/Shell and AT&T, and sat on the board of the Santa Fe Institute. Brand has been one of the leading technologists in personal computing and Internet communication for over forty years, (even before the advent of the home computer).
The three way intersection of social vision, technological wonderment and environmental awareness produces several moral and ethical traffic jams in Brand’s life, often putting his views at odds with mainstream doctrine in the counter-cultures he helped to create.
A fascinating article in today’s New York Times examines Brand as an environmental heretic, a phrase Brand coined during the interview to describe himself. His recent calls for expansion of nuclear power as an energy source, urbanization and acceptance of genetic and bio-engineering have staggered environmental activists around the world.
According to the article, Brand divides the environmental movement into two camps, the romantic and the scientific. He clearly looks to the scientific side to provide the solutions needed to provide for a planet approaching 8 billion people.
Brand’s latest project is the construction of a giant clock designed to run for 10,000 years in the middle of a mountain in the Nevada desert. The clock will draw its power from changes in temperature. Brand is building it to demonstrate the degree of long-term thinking involved in making long-term social and environmental change. Borrowing a term from musician Brian Eno, Brand’s piece is called the Long Now Clock.
His story is an interesting one I wanted to illustrate today. It might not be about search exactly but it has a hell of a tech angle. Stewart Brand claims a big piece of our shared history. At age 68, he is still working to make us think about our shared future.
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