Code Nation. Michael J. Halvorson
know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting.
An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:
1.Useful as a tool,
2.Relevant to independent education,
3.High quality or low cost,
4.Not already common knowledge,
5.Easily available by mail.
This information is continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff.21
This preface, explaining the importance of “tools” and how they were selected, appears in each published edition. The compendium appeared every 3 months or so, changing its focus with the seasons. Between 1968 and 1972, almost two million copies of Whole Earth Catalog were sold, and each edition contained new essays, tools, and reviews. The central organizing categories in the catalog included “Understanding Whole Systems,” “Land Use,” “Shelter,” “Industry,” “Craft,” “Community,” “Nomadics,” “Communications,” and “Learning.” Within each category there were listings of mail order products, book reviews, scientific texts, photo-graphs, and short articles from contemporary figures such as Buckminster Fuller, Wendell Berry, Marshall McLuhan, and Timothy Leary. The catalog was essentially a utopian mail-order directory stocked with materials that would inspire hippies and communalists to raise their consciousness, live peacefully, and make the world a better place.
The Whole Earth Catalog became the bible of sorts for countercultural groups like the New Communalists. While paging through several volumes of the oversized catalog in preparation for Code Nation, I was struck by the optimism and excitement of the movement, which grew to attract over 750,000 people and more than 10,000 Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement communes across the U.S.22 In the space of an afternoon, a typical reader is able to learn something about growing crops, caring for farm animals, building basic structures, weaving cloth, generating power, preserving food, managing waste, providing for health care (including home births), keeping bees, building furniture, throwing pottery, establishing communal baths, meditating, and experimenting with mind-altering drugs. Providing essential tips for DIY communal living was the catalog’s main purpose. All the book and merchandise reviews were positive, too. Discouraging product reviews were not printed as they supposedly transmitted “negative energy.”
Figure 2.5Cover of the Whole Earth Catalog (Fall 1970).Whole Earth Catalog (Courtesy of Getty Images, Glenn Smith, contributor)
In terms of computing technology, the Whole Earth Catalog is surprisingly taciturn on electronics, computers, and software. Stewart Brand scholars tend to regard The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971) as the definitive Whole Earth text because it offers the widest range of content, enjoyed the best sales, and was the winner Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement of a national book award. Despite its comprehensive coverage, however, the 1971 Whole Earth Catalog Last Whole Earth Catalog features no computers, terminals, calculators, or software programs, nor do the editors write at any length about the burgeoning realms of computer technology. Only in earlier volumes, such as the March 1969 Supplement to the catalog, can one find an occasional reference to computer-related technology, such as a photograph of a computer club meeting or a short advertisement for a calculator.
This might seem surprising, considering my earlier emphasis on the “crisis” mentality of the computer industry and the flurry of activity around the software engineering conference at Garmisch. But the reality was that the computer world was still in its infancy, a topic for government analysts and specialists in research labs. Most Americans had no direct experience with computers. At best, they caught glimpses of hulking mainframe units in films, television shows, and news broadcasts.
As in most things, Stewart Brand was a bit ahead of the curve. In December 1968, Brand had assisted Bay Area inventor Doug Engelbart at the so-called “Mother of All Demos” exhibition “Mother of All Demos” exhibition in San Francisco, demonstrating creative uses for computer terminals and the future of input devices and GUIs. But this moment aside, there were limits to what regular people knew about computers. Sophisticated electronics were especially rare in the rural communes or humble row houses that sheltered Whole Earth Catalog readers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was also a huge cultural gap between corporate computing and the average work experience of Americans. All of this explains why the only mention of computers in The Last Whole Earth Catalog is a textbook about how to create computer graphics from Prentice Hall, and a review of Nicholas Negroponte’s new book on computer-aided design and human-computer interaction.23 About the Negroponte book, Brand simply offered the quip in his publisher reviewer notes: “A book of beginning efforts to domesticate computers. Good intro to life with dumb-fuck genius machines.”24
Brand and the editors of Whole Earth Catalog often included short notes like this about the products that they list. Negroponte’s book was clearly innovative (he would go on to have an important career in computing), but Brand’s note also passes along a common stereotype about electronic devices in this era—they appeared both stupid and smart at the same time. In other words, computers offered both control and freedom to users. Like the human soul, they required some measure of domestication and familiarity before transcendence might occur. Counterculture movement Computing mythologiescounterculture movement
The Whole Earth Catalog Whole Earth Catalog was not an engineering manual. However, it spoke in metaphorical rhythms about small-scale tools that might elevate America’s consciousness. The editors offered a compelling ideology: that low-cost instruments that would soon return human communities to pre-industrial simplicity. Through the process, they would gradually raise group awareness. The counterculture movement had different priorities than high technology advocates, but the movement’s ideas about tools were provocative and they left a lasting impression.
2.5IntertwingularityEverything is Deeply Intertwingled Computing mythologiesintertwingularity
The Whole Earth Catalog’s busy, sprawling format was copied by numerous authors and innovators in the 1970s. The publication’s homemade cut-and-paste quality, often utilizing different typefaces and texts rotated in opposing directions, became a recognizable standard for creativity, free thought, and challenging the status quo.
One of the most influential adapters of this style on the West Coast was Nelson, Ted Ted Nelson (1937– ), author of the iconic idea and design book Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974). It is not an overstatement to say that this book and its positive message about computers and computer literacy changed computing history.25
Ted Nelson was a prolific writer and inventor who studied philosophy and sociology, composed a rock-and-roll musical, made films, taught in the humanities, consulted in corporate and academic contexts, and completed distinctive work as an artist and designer. While Stewart Brand did not make many overt connections to computer technology in Whole Earth Catalog, Nelson oozed enthusiasm for computing in his writings, using his self-published Computer Lib/Dream Machines as a call to action for learning about computers and leveraging their power for good. As Nelson’s ideas and enthusiasm attracted followers, he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, making friends with engineers and inventors at the Home Brew Computer Club, Stanford Research Institute, and other high-tech hubs. Nelson would pursue a fascinating career in computing as a visionary and futurist, coining the term Hypertext hypertext (text on a computer screen linked to webs of other texts), and envisioning a graphical, compound-document system that he called Xanadu Xanadu. Hypertext and compound-documents would eventually be adopted in a variety of contexts in the computing world, including Tim Berners-Lee’s implementation of the World Wide Web. I am grateful for Dr. Nelson’s gift of an unpublished photograph from his collection for this book (see Figure 2.6). Computing mythologiesintertwingularity
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