I love the Whole Earth Catalog. That era of techno-utopian optimism is so exciting. I'm too young to have experienced more then the tail end of it in the 90s going to computer camp as a kid, but it felt like anything was possible and everything was connected.
It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
If you look at the first 10 years of Whole Earth Review, starting in 1985, it's startling to see the similarities to the issues of today.
January 1985: Computers as Poison - "It is not our hand that we put into the computer, it is our attention."
July 1985: Digital Retouching - "The end of photography as evidence of anything"
Winter 1985: "Islam: Beyond the Stereotypes"
Spring 1986: "Peering into the age of Transparency" - about space surveillance
Summer 1986: “This text tries to explain how minds work. How can intelligence emerge from non-intelligence? To answer that, I’ll show that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.”
Fall 1986: The Fringes of Reason - Strange myths and eccentric science
Winter 1986: AmerRuss - Joining America and Russia into one country
Summer 1987: What is real & A No-Cash Economy that Works
Fall 1987: Doing Drag & Male Identity
Summer 1988: The Far Left & Far Right Converge
Summer 1988: The Rights of Robots
Whole Earth published a whole spectrum of ideas, so you can cherry pick and find things that were prescient of the trouble we would find ourselves in. But overall the publication held a very optimistic view that stands at odds with present day reality.
> It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
For a comically small amount of money I can listen to any song I want to, read any book I want to, watch any movie/TV show I want to. Then there’s the ad-supported videos and images and text. Then there’s the AIs that I use every day!
I’m in awe at how amazing where we have landed at is. Sure some stuff isn’t perfect but what fun is it to be sad about what is pretty cool?
Maybe you're too young to remember the kind of vibe and optimism that people rode in the 90s.
Felt like everything was going to be better, like we humans were going to be better. More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us.
In fact, I invite you to re read your entire post. You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress, but...people have never read as little as they do today, never went to so few concerts as today, or the movies and the average adult in US spends less than 4 hours socializing (including both family and friends) per week, that's less than half the quote of the 90s which was already less but not as significantly.
You didn't explicitly call your examples major milestones of human progress but you did use rather trite examples of consumer capitalism as a counter example to my disappointment at the lackluster end game of 20th century techno-futurism.
As other commenters have stated the techno-futurist vision that comes out of the Whole Earth Catalog was radically utopian and far grander then "I get to watch low value consumer media whenever I want."
I’d say dirt cheap solar panels and CRISPR based vaccines are pretty cool. I’m also quite optimistic about the proliferation of plausible SMR designs. That new concrete that self heals and sequesters carbon is cool too.
Social dislocation, a loneliness epidemic, the breakdown of civil society and of trust in the media, gambling unleashed in everyone's pockets, billions of dollars spent trying to get you addicted to scrolling on your phone... Yes, it's worth bemoaning that.
Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm here, but it would be worth asking what the consequences of this situation are for the people who actually make all the music/books/films you get to consume for a "comically small amount of money".
I know this is a razz but I must have you know I use a frankenstein-d iPod classic with rockbox, bluetooth mod, and an SSD. Don't hate on Zunes those things ruled too. Nothing beats a sansa clip though.
Project like this make me stop and truly appreciate the time someone took to make this... and make me wish I had more time in my day to consume this beauty in its entirety. So much knowledge retained here.
I have a book which lists companies which sent out mail order catalogs back in the 70s --- I'm pretty sure it was listed in a Whole Earth Catalog (might even have been published by them).
I recall seeing the catalog around. My (hippie) mom must have had a copy.
I was only a kid growing up in the 70's but it definitely brings back memories of that time of optimism. There was a lot of experimentation and a willingness to try new ideas in all aspects of society. Besides the experimental education that I recall brushes with, you had Buckminster Fuller and his dome-home ideas, the U.S. space program…
To be sure things weren't all Pet Rocks and Lava lamps but there sure did seem to be a lot more joy and fun in the world then.
What I do these days for "comfort time" is to pull down things like these (and old magazines) in PDF form and browse them off-line.
You can use whatever viewer you like of course, but I ended up building a crude but dedicated device (based around Raspberry Pi and a small Python app) that is just for PDF-magazine browsing. Bookmarking, a progress indicator per title so you know which magazines you've read, which one you are still working through.
I have easily a terra-byte of magazines to still work through. As I implied though, I go back to it when I just want to decompress and shut out the present-day for a while.
(I'm pulling all these Whole Earth Catalogs down now.)
This is pretty COOL! Right up my alley. I have been working on a similar project with PUNK ZINES. I have a lil loop going with Internet Archive - Scraped all of their zines and any new submissions I upload to them. Yours is much prettier than mine. NICE NICE job. Bookmark.
Apparently ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-importance-of-Christopher-... ) one of the things that originally got computer scientists interested in Christopher Alexander was the original Whole Earth Catalog promoting his Notes on the Synthesis of Form.
This is great! I remember a turning point for me when I was feeling very low at the height of the War on Terror and jingoism appeared to have taken over the world. Just before the housing bubble popped and politics would swing the other way, but we didn't know that was going to happen yet.
John Mayer was playing music at Macworld 2007 (wish I could find the video) and said "Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. just make life more fun. It's like the opposite of terrorism":
I think of stuff like the Whole Earth Catalog as the opposite of neofeudalism and tech bro culture's revisionist history.
It doesn't have to be this way. Wealth inequality isn't invincible, or even inevitable. Back to basics works. We can get our hacker culture back. We can restore the timeline that's been stolen from us, the one we were on in the 90s before financialization and ensh@ttification ruined all the fun.
Inspiring comment. I hope you're right, if nothing else for the next generation's sake. I'm a bit more pessimistic here.
> We can restore the timeline that's been stolen from us, the one we were on in the 90s before financialization and ensh@ttification ruined all the fun.
It'd have to be a cultural change. Consumers at large have decided with their wallet they'll buy products made anywhere, of any quality, with missing or abusive support, if it means they can save a dime. Or that they'll sign away every ounce of privacy if it's free. Until we fix that problem, fixing anything else is going to be hard.
I like that younger generations care, or at least pretend to, about causes and sustainability. Not that that itself isn't being abused, but it's a glimmer of hope.
Inequality necessarily reduces living standards for those at the bottom of the heap.
When the person at the top has more than they can spend on necessities and luxuries, they put their money to work. That means buying assets and driving up their prices.
Some assets are fairly divorced from the "real" economy, but enough filter through to extract wealth from the masses who have to work for a living as eg. spiralling rents, inflated credentialism etc.
Unironically, imagine some curated index of everything you could buy from anyone anywhere, or find anywhere or make from anything, that would actually be useful.
... at least until 500,000 people descend on some small town searching for NFTium or whatever.
Seeing this on the front page again prompted me to dig into some of the Whole Earth Catalog successor publications for the first time.
I came across an article in Whole Earth Software Review, where many participants on a forum discuss the emerging technology of word processors — particularly interesting given the rise of LLMs as a new tool for "writing".
> LEVY: I readily admit that using my Apple and Wordstar has changed me considerably. I do stories faster, write them more organically and have time to play more. I play on my computer a lot. Word processing, even in our current brain-damaged technological state, is something that significantly improves lives.
> SPEZZANO: … You could thoroughly try out five cars in one day, but it would take a month to really test out five word processors.
> SPEZZANO: … I think the overall plan should be to work towards a software aesthetic, a capacity on the part of the reader to appreciate a good program. Most of us don't have this because a computer program is a new medium. Like the appreciation of art or music or literature, software appreciation may not lead to one perfect word processor but an increased ability to see the subtleties of the medium, and to be articulate about what you think and don't like.
> ICENOGLE: … Transparency isn't a property of the program. It concerns the relationship of the user to the program. If you don't have to think about it, it's transparent.
> LISWOOD: Some day I will be able to talk at the screen, and then I can really screw things up in a hurry.
> McWILLIAMS: I have noticed my handwriting has deteriorated significantly ever since my word processor arrived. Is this happening to anyone else?
> NAIMAN: … Yes, my handwriting has gotten much worse since I've been using a word processor. And I find I can hardly ever write a short note, even just a line or two, without scratching something out and rewording it.
The list of "Fifteen Word Processor Commandments" at the end of the article is also a fun read. And right after that:
> The typewriter is a tool that extends human capabilities. It lets the dysgraphic writer read his own writing and allows him to share it with others. The word processing computer goes further. It separates writing (modeling ideas with words) from printing. This is why this tool is so important to me. Since the writing first exists only electronically, one can word and rework it for as long as necessary — moving things around, correcting spelling, transpositions and typos — before it gets printed.
> It's unfortunate that there's been so much hype and lack of imagination an insight about all of the wonderful things computers can do for us. Given this, it was hard for me to visualize a personal use for a computer until I found out about word processing.
Amusingly, my first intro to the Whole Earth Catalog was the cocktail menu at Trick dog in 2019[0], which is very clearly a reference to the Fall 1970 issue.
I love the Whole Earth Catalog. That era of techno-utopian optimism is so exciting. I'm too young to have experienced more then the tail end of it in the 90s going to computer camp as a kid, but it felt like anything was possible and everything was connected.
It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
If you look at the first 10 years of Whole Earth Review, starting in 1985, it's startling to see the similarities to the issues of today.
January 1985: Computers as Poison - "It is not our hand that we put into the computer, it is our attention."
July 1985: Digital Retouching - "The end of photography as evidence of anything"
Winter 1985: "Islam: Beyond the Stereotypes"
Spring 1986: "Peering into the age of Transparency" - about space surveillance
Summer 1986: “This text tries to explain how minds work. How can intelligence emerge from non-intelligence? To answer that, I’ll show that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.”
Fall 1986: The Fringes of Reason - Strange myths and eccentric science
Winter 1986: AmerRuss - Joining America and Russia into one country
Summer 1987: What is real & A No-Cash Economy that Works
Fall 1987: Doing Drag & Male Identity
Summer 1988: The Far Left & Far Right Converge Summer 1988: The Rights of Robots
Summer 1989: Is the body obsolete
Summer 1991: Electronic Democracy
Winter 1991: Questioning Technology
Fall 1992: Artificial Life
Whole Earth published a whole spectrum of ideas, so you can cherry pick and find things that were prescient of the trouble we would find ourselves in. But overall the publication held a very optimistic view that stands at odds with present day reality.
> It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.
For a comically small amount of money I can listen to any song I want to, read any book I want to, watch any movie/TV show I want to. Then there’s the ad-supported videos and images and text. Then there’s the AIs that I use every day!
I’m in awe at how amazing where we have landed at is. Sure some stuff isn’t perfect but what fun is it to be sad about what is pretty cool?
Maybe you're too young to remember the kind of vibe and optimism that people rode in the 90s.
Felt like everything was going to be better, like we humans were going to be better. More peace, no apartheid, no Soviet union, removing borders between countries in Europe, tech felt like a way to connect us.
In fact, I invite you to re read your entire post. You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress, but...people have never read as little as they do today, never went to so few concerts as today, or the movies and the average adult in US spends less than 4 hours socializing (including both family and friends) per week, that's less than half the quote of the 90s which was already less but not as significantly.
I started getting online in around 1996 for whatever that’s worth.
> You post achievements in conveniences as major milestones for human progress
A careful reader will note that I did not do this.
You didn't explicitly call your examples major milestones of human progress but you did use rather trite examples of consumer capitalism as a counter example to my disappointment at the lackluster end game of 20th century techno-futurism.
As other commenters have stated the techno-futurist vision that comes out of the Whole Earth Catalog was radically utopian and far grander then "I get to watch low value consumer media whenever I want."
I’d say dirt cheap solar panels and CRISPR based vaccines are pretty cool. I’m also quite optimistic about the proliferation of plausible SMR designs. That new concrete that self heals and sequesters carbon is cool too.
And we have the administration of the ex-hegemon working to demonise most of the cool innovations we do have.
Social dislocation, a loneliness epidemic, the breakdown of civil society and of trust in the media, gambling unleashed in everyone's pockets, billions of dollars spent trying to get you addicted to scrolling on your phone... Yes, it's worth bemoaning that.
Yeah my mistake you’re right. I’ll go be sad for awhile as penance!
Maybe I'm missing some sarcasm here, but it would be worth asking what the consequences of this situation are for the people who actually make all the music/books/films you get to consume for a "comically small amount of money".
I don’t know, I haven’t talked to Taylor Swift or the Grateful Dead lately.
I Live in a Techno-Dystopian Surveillance Nightmare and All I Got Was This Shitty MP3 Player
Sorry you bought a Zune instead of an iPod.
I know this is a razz but I must have you know I use a frankenstein-d iPod classic with rockbox, bluetooth mod, and an SSD. Don't hate on Zunes those things ruled too. Nothing beats a sansa clip though.
It’s actually a pretty cool mp3 player!
Project like this make me stop and truly appreciate the time someone took to make this... and make me wish I had more time in my day to consume this beauty in its entirety. So much knowledge retained here.
Jobs called it "Google in paperback form" [1].
I wonder what obscure (probably online?) source of information of today we'll be comparing to the mainstream sources of tomorrow.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/09/steve-job...
He specifically references the last page of the last issue, and concludes his commencement speech with its words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." [1]
Pretty nice to see it context, next to all the other editions.
> I wonder what obscure (probably online?) source of information of today we'll be comparing to the mainstream sources of tomorrow.
Maybe this very website will be among them?
[1] https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-epilog-october-1974?fo...
I have a book which lists companies which sent out mail order catalogs back in the 70s --- I'm pretty sure it was listed in a Whole Earth Catalog (might even have been published by them).
Probably books like the Imponderables and Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series. It wasn't always the most accurate, but they at least made an effort.
I recall seeing the catalog around. My (hippie) mom must have had a copy.
I was only a kid growing up in the 70's but it definitely brings back memories of that time of optimism. There was a lot of experimentation and a willingness to try new ideas in all aspects of society. Besides the experimental education that I recall brushes with, you had Buckminster Fuller and his dome-home ideas, the U.S. space program…
To be sure things weren't all Pet Rocks and Lava lamps but there sure did seem to be a lot more joy and fun in the world then.
What I do these days for "comfort time" is to pull down things like these (and old magazines) in PDF form and browse them off-line.
You can use whatever viewer you like of course, but I ended up building a crude but dedicated device (based around Raspberry Pi and a small Python app) that is just for PDF-magazine browsing. Bookmarking, a progress indicator per title so you know which magazines you've read, which one you are still working through.
I have easily a terra-byte of magazines to still work through. As I implied though, I go back to it when I just want to decompress and shut out the present-day for a while.
(I'm pulling all these Whole Earth Catalogs down now.)
This is pretty COOL! Right up my alley. I have been working on a similar project with PUNK ZINES. I have a lil loop going with Internet Archive - Scraped all of their zines and any new submissions I upload to them. Yours is much prettier than mine. NICE NICE job. Bookmark.
Is it live yet? I'd love to see it whenever it is.
Apparently ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-importance-of-Christopher-... ) one of the things that originally got computer scientists interested in Christopher Alexander was the original Whole Earth Catalog promoting his Notes on the Synthesis of Form.
I have never heard of Christopher Alexander (and Quora is unusable). Who is he?
Previously:
Complete Whole Earth Catalogs Archive Available Online and Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38068370 - Oct 2023 (7 comments)
The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37872774 - Oct 2023 (81 comments)
This is great! I remember a turning point for me when I was feeling very low at the height of the War on Terror and jingoism appeared to have taken over the world. Just before the housing bubble popped and politics would swing the other way, but we didn't know that was going to happen yet.
John Mayer was playing music at Macworld 2007 (wish I could find the video) and said "Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. just make life more fun. It's like the opposite of terrorism":
https://www.cnet.com/culture/live-macworld-coverage/
I think of stuff like the Whole Earth Catalog as the opposite of neofeudalism and tech bro culture's revisionist history.
It doesn't have to be this way. Wealth inequality isn't invincible, or even inevitable. Back to basics works. We can get our hacker culture back. We can restore the timeline that's been stolen from us, the one we were on in the 90s before financialization and ensh@ttification ruined all the fun.
Inspiring comment. I hope you're right, if nothing else for the next generation's sake. I'm a bit more pessimistic here.
> We can restore the timeline that's been stolen from us, the one we were on in the 90s before financialization and ensh@ttification ruined all the fun.
It'd have to be a cultural change. Consumers at large have decided with their wallet they'll buy products made anywhere, of any quality, with missing or abusive support, if it means they can save a dime. Or that they'll sign away every ounce of privacy if it's free. Until we fix that problem, fixing anything else is going to be hard.
I like that younger generations care, or at least pretend to, about causes and sustainability. Not that that itself isn't being abused, but it's a glimmer of hope.
Not sure why wealth inequality is mixed anywhere near the rest of the topics.
I couldn't care less about it, if some people live to make money, let them, as long as they do it legally.
On the other hand hacker culture is very lacking and the fact that we don't really own our devices is part of the issue.p
Inequality necessarily reduces living standards for those at the bottom of the heap.
When the person at the top has more than they can spend on necessities and luxuries, they put their money to work. That means buying assets and driving up their prices.
Some assets are fairly divorced from the "real" economy, but enough filter through to extract wealth from the masses who have to work for a living as eg. spiralling rents, inflated credentialism etc.
I'm not familiar with the publication, so I was imagining a joke website that purports to index every object on the Earth.
Unironically, imagine some curated index of everything you could buy from anyone anywhere, or find anywhere or make from anything, that would actually be useful.
... at least until 500,000 people descend on some small town searching for NFTium or whatever.
Seeing this on the front page again prompted me to dig into some of the Whole Earth Catalog successor publications for the first time.
I came across an article in Whole Earth Software Review, where many participants on a forum discuss the emerging technology of word processors — particularly interesting given the rise of LLMs as a new tool for "writing".
https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-software-review-no-1-s...
A few quotes:
> LEVY: I readily admit that using my Apple and Wordstar has changed me considerably. I do stories faster, write them more organically and have time to play more. I play on my computer a lot. Word processing, even in our current brain-damaged technological state, is something that significantly improves lives.
> SPEZZANO: … You could thoroughly try out five cars in one day, but it would take a month to really test out five word processors.
> SPEZZANO: … I think the overall plan should be to work towards a software aesthetic, a capacity on the part of the reader to appreciate a good program. Most of us don't have this because a computer program is a new medium. Like the appreciation of art or music or literature, software appreciation may not lead to one perfect word processor but an increased ability to see the subtleties of the medium, and to be articulate about what you think and don't like.
> ICENOGLE: … Transparency isn't a property of the program. It concerns the relationship of the user to the program. If you don't have to think about it, it's transparent.
> LISWOOD: Some day I will be able to talk at the screen, and then I can really screw things up in a hurry.
> McWILLIAMS: I have noticed my handwriting has deteriorated significantly ever since my word processor arrived. Is this happening to anyone else?
> NAIMAN: … Yes, my handwriting has gotten much worse since I've been using a word processor. And I find I can hardly ever write a short note, even just a line or two, without scratching something out and rewording it.
The list of "Fifteen Word Processor Commandments" at the end of the article is also a fun read. And right after that:
> The typewriter is a tool that extends human capabilities. It lets the dysgraphic writer read his own writing and allows him to share it with others. The word processing computer goes further. It separates writing (modeling ideas with words) from printing. This is why this tool is so important to me. Since the writing first exists only electronically, one can word and rework it for as long as necessary — moving things around, correcting spelling, transpositions and typos — before it gets printed.
> It's unfortunate that there's been so much hype and lack of imagination an insight about all of the wonderful things computers can do for us. Given this, it was hard for me to visualize a personal use for a computer until I found out about word processing.
Amusingly, my first intro to the Whole Earth Catalog was the cocktail menu at Trick dog in 2019[0], which is very clearly a reference to the Fall 1970 issue.
[0]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/file/484/6/4846-Whole%20Dog%20Ca...
I clicked on the link ready to invest in this ETF but was disappointed
A sense of humor is desperately needed in these pages. Thank you.
Hoping it was also equally weighted too...