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Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand
Told by one of our greatest chroniclers of technology and society, the definitive biography of iconic serial visionary Stewart Brand, from the Merry Pranksters and the generation-defining Whole Earth Catalog to the marriage of environmental consciousness and hacker capitalism and the rise of a new planetary culture—the story behind so many other stories
Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Steve Jobs’s endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live.
The contradictions are A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog , the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was “Access to Tools”; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world.
Brand's life can be hard to fit onto one screen. John Markoff, also a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brand’s life against its proper landscape. As Markoff makes marvelously clear, the streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brand’s entire life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.
Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Steve Jobs’s endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live.
The contradictions are A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog , the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was “Access to Tools”; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world.
Brand's life can be hard to fit onto one screen. John Markoff, also a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brand’s life against its proper landscape. As Markoff makes marvelously clear, the streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brand’s entire life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.
416 pages, Hardcover
Published March 22, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
January 4, 2023
I was looking forward to this one. I was a big Whole Earth fan back in the day, and I've enjoyed previous books by author Markoff. But this one is awfully loose & baggy, and I started skimming early. Now I'm at p. 280 (marked) of 364 (actual text). I liked the photos, and liked the reminders of Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Coevolution Quarterly. I kept copies of many of these up to our last move, when *drastic* thinning was necessary to fit our stuff into our tiny coastal Calif house. We had two good-size houses, one each in AZ & NM, and it was GREAT having room for everything. Plus, both of them were paid for! Now we have 12oo sq ft on a 35oo sq ft lot, plus a BIG mortgage, high taxes, expensive gas & everything else. Bummer. Oh, well. It is pretty out here. Climate is better. So long as the water holds out....
So. The book. He didn't have anything like enough material to fill 400-some pages, not and hold my interest. 200 pages might have been pushing it. So, don't waste my time, Mr. Markoff. I don't have that much left! 2 stars may be a little harsh, but "It's a sin to waste the reader's time!"
So. The book. He didn't have anything like enough material to fill 400-some pages, not and hold my interest. 200 pages might have been pushing it. So, don't waste my time, Mr. Markoff. I don't have that much left! 2 stars may be a little harsh, but "It's a sin to waste the reader's time!"
May 4, 2022
Stewart Brand is an interesting guy with a strange life, many adventures and projects, and an incredible number of interesting friends, acquaintances, and partners. I really loved one of his early projects as a teenager “The Whole Catalog” but that is only a tiny bit of what he has done in his life. I also think he was irresponsible, prone to creating cool-sounding but meaningless slogans, and I’m not sure if he really came up with anything that will last, including his “Long Now” clock. I guess cultural historians in a hundred years or 500 years can discuss that. All in all a fun book to read, although I’m not sure it made me like Brand more or less.
March 24, 2022
This biography of Steward Brand a great job communicating the freewheeling atmosphere of technology, activism, environmentalism and exploration that led Brand to thrive in the communal North Beach area of San Francisco and pioneer important innovations like the Whole Earth Catalog and the Long Now Foundation that have inspired a whole lot of technologists, environmentalists and writers (Steve Jobs famously mentioned Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog in his "Stay hungry, stay foolish" exhortation at Stanford in 2005).
Markoff details many of Brand's forays; into LSD, into art and photography, into Native American culture, into the Beat movement. All of these came together to create a unique iconoclast who pioneered many early aspects of technology, networking and environmentalism while never being part of the mainstream himself and not being afraid to take on the same movements he launched when he thought they were becoming too hidebound; his embrace of nuclear power is an example.
The best image I have of Brand is that of a tree sending saplings out everywhere, with each sapling taking root and sprouting a whole new, unique world of its own. In many ways he exemplifies the zeitgeist of responsible stewardship of technology development and environmentalism that should be a blueprint for us as we march half-blind into the age of AI and genetic engineering. Now in his 80s and having lived on his Sausalito boat for a long time, Brand remains a one of a kind. In many ways his story is the story of America and especially California coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, and John Markoff does an excellent job recounting it.
Markoff details many of Brand's forays; into LSD, into art and photography, into Native American culture, into the Beat movement. All of these came together to create a unique iconoclast who pioneered many early aspects of technology, networking and environmentalism while never being part of the mainstream himself and not being afraid to take on the same movements he launched when he thought they were becoming too hidebound; his embrace of nuclear power is an example.
The best image I have of Brand is that of a tree sending saplings out everywhere, with each sapling taking root and sprouting a whole new, unique world of its own. In many ways he exemplifies the zeitgeist of responsible stewardship of technology development and environmentalism that should be a blueprint for us as we march half-blind into the age of AI and genetic engineering. Now in his 80s and having lived on his Sausalito boat for a long time, Brand remains a one of a kind. In many ways his story is the story of America and especially California coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, and John Markoff does an excellent job recounting it.
August 13, 2023
I asked my local library to order this, and when they finally got it I was glad the book was held for me. Stewart Brand has earned distinction as an editor, publisher, and prolific author, also as an event organizer, goad to NASA, explorer of emerging education models, and consultant. John Markoff unfolds a story of Brand’s remarkable personal development and epic struggles.
Markoff, for 28 years a technology journalist for the New York Times, interviewed Brand some 70 times and was given access to numerous journals and other writings. It’s the most detailed biography I’ve read, but for me it moved along briskly. (I’d give it four-and-a-half stars, if I could.)
Markoff deems Brand to have been a key player in “a new environmental movement.” As he sees it, Brand has metamorphosed via frequent reversals and loops along the way. As much as landing in confusions, or being an au contraire personality, Brand has always been one who’s easily bored — bored, especially, with any futile status quo. Unchanging, though, has been his fervent desire for humankind to survive. He now stands as an unorthodox environmentalist, a bellwether who's resurfaced in public consciousness a handful of times.
Born in 1938 and raised in the American Midwest, as a boy he was an avid reader with an ever-questing mind. In early youth he lived his summers outdoors, becoming a hiker, climber, and explorer of wild country acquainted with its animals.
Brand’s parents weren’t truly wealthy, but they could afford sending their sons to Phillips Exeter Academy for high school. During student years, tempted by the state’s reputation, Stewart journeyed to California for a quick glimpse. After high school he returned there to enter prestigious Stanford U., intending to gorge his wide-ranging intellectual and arts passions. One summer he took a holiday in Paris and Lucerne. Back in California, he found conversation among people his age in San Francisco’s bohemian North Beach (and nearby Sausalito) to be more stimulating than the possibilities among Stanford’s students!
During his university years, he found employment as a logging laborer, freelance photographer, budding article writer, and publication-staff hand. He graduated with a BSc in biology. Having long considered a military career, he enlisted in the pre-Vietnam-era Army. He became a parachutist, a sharpshooting instructor, and eventually a second-lieutenant. His inner self actually hated the reductive, futile Army system (he viewed it a rigid, petty “bureaucracy”). Yet he later always acknowledged he’d gained some useful capability for organizing projects.
When his brief active duty ended, he returned to California. There, he took part in the famous Sequoia Seminars, convened not far from Stanford. In 1962, the Seminars spurred him to pay a fee for a place among the International Foundation for Advanced Study’s initial 153 test subjects; the project, in a Menlo Park hospital, was exploring potential therapeutic effects of a little-known psychoactive called LSD.
Not long after some subsequent self-directed experiences, Brand was invited to join a project that ensconced him in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (north-central Oregon). It was a truly Earth-rooted cultural experience that linked-up many of his interests. In fact, his stay there imparted some form to his future. Eventually, photos he shot became part of a travelling multi-media show he presented in California.
A few years later, Brand ingested a low dose of LSD and stepped up to his apartment building’s roof. His vista from there, transformed by the drug and seen as through a fish-eye lens, evoked a mental hologram of planet Earth as a globe in space. Reflecting afterwards, he decided to initiate a bi-coastal campaign to prod NASA to make public an image of our planet as seen from an orbiting space capsule. Brand felt the ‘whole-earth’ image could help to rally humanity. This harmonized well with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, with whom Brand had spent time. NASA soon obliged.
In due course, Brand and his then-wife Lois Jennings organized a group of creative young people to assemble an unprecedented periodical, the Whole Earth Catalog. Launched in late 1968, it may be Brand’s most widely known accomplishment, and — as a crown jewel of the counterculture — it’s not hyperbolic for author Markoff to claim it had a rousing effect in the U.S. (As just one consequence, it inspired the projects of Apple founder Steve Jobs.)
Underlying principles included “whole systems,” (e.g., biospherics and ecology) and cultural adaptation. The Catalog’s subtitle read “Access to Tools,” specifically many books (reviewed) plus the lowdown about where to get information for doing everything from food-gardening to sewing clothing, from learning welding to delivering a baby, from applying first-aid to home-scale wind turbines… and a great deal more.
After the first issues, readers’ recommendations and reviews became typical items (a method emulated, no doubt, by Goodreads & Amazon). A young dream travelled where the young would take it! Importantly, networking (in this and other ways) was Brand’s métier during the decades after: publications that he edited (e.g., CoEvolution Quarterly), working as a "special advisor" in governor Jerry Brown’s brain trust, connecting with high-rollers in computer development, launching The Well (a pioneering online community), and, later on, his researches into learning, and in the Global Business Network (consulting for firms like Volvo) and the Long Now Foundation.
Markoff introduces many fascinating and influential people whom Brand learned from or worked with, among them Gregory Bateson, Ken Kesey, Dick Raymond, Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, Brian Eno, and Brand's wife Patty Phelan, not to mention Jeff Bezos and astronaut Rusty Schweickart.
I can’t say that I’ve agreed with all of Brand’s opinions or resonated with each of his phases. But his energetic, variegated, brilliant life makes for an engaging tale of a rugged individualist, a frontrunner, who came to deeply understand the value of cooperation and team work.
Markoff, for 28 years a technology journalist for the New York Times, interviewed Brand some 70 times and was given access to numerous journals and other writings. It’s the most detailed biography I’ve read, but for me it moved along briskly. (I’d give it four-and-a-half stars, if I could.)
Markoff deems Brand to have been a key player in “a new environmental movement.” As he sees it, Brand has metamorphosed via frequent reversals and loops along the way. As much as landing in confusions, or being an au contraire personality, Brand has always been one who’s easily bored — bored, especially, with any futile status quo. Unchanging, though, has been his fervent desire for humankind to survive. He now stands as an unorthodox environmentalist, a bellwether who's resurfaced in public consciousness a handful of times.
Born in 1938 and raised in the American Midwest, as a boy he was an avid reader with an ever-questing mind. In early youth he lived his summers outdoors, becoming a hiker, climber, and explorer of wild country acquainted with its animals.
Brand’s parents weren’t truly wealthy, but they could afford sending their sons to Phillips Exeter Academy for high school. During student years, tempted by the state’s reputation, Stewart journeyed to California for a quick glimpse. After high school he returned there to enter prestigious Stanford U., intending to gorge his wide-ranging intellectual and arts passions. One summer he took a holiday in Paris and Lucerne. Back in California, he found conversation among people his age in San Francisco’s bohemian North Beach (and nearby Sausalito) to be more stimulating than the possibilities among Stanford’s students!
During his university years, he found employment as a logging laborer, freelance photographer, budding article writer, and publication-staff hand. He graduated with a BSc in biology. Having long considered a military career, he enlisted in the pre-Vietnam-era Army. He became a parachutist, a sharpshooting instructor, and eventually a second-lieutenant. His inner self actually hated the reductive, futile Army system (he viewed it a rigid, petty “bureaucracy”). Yet he later always acknowledged he’d gained some useful capability for organizing projects.
When his brief active duty ended, he returned to California. There, he took part in the famous Sequoia Seminars, convened not far from Stanford. In 1962, the Seminars spurred him to pay a fee for a place among the International Foundation for Advanced Study’s initial 153 test subjects; the project, in a Menlo Park hospital, was exploring potential therapeutic effects of a little-known psychoactive called LSD.
Not long after some subsequent self-directed experiences, Brand was invited to join a project that ensconced him in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (north-central Oregon). It was a truly Earth-rooted cultural experience that linked-up many of his interests. In fact, his stay there imparted some form to his future. Eventually, photos he shot became part of a travelling multi-media show he presented in California.
A few years later, Brand ingested a low dose of LSD and stepped up to his apartment building’s roof. His vista from there, transformed by the drug and seen as through a fish-eye lens, evoked a mental hologram of planet Earth as a globe in space. Reflecting afterwards, he decided to initiate a bi-coastal campaign to prod NASA to make public an image of our planet as seen from an orbiting space capsule. Brand felt the ‘whole-earth’ image could help to rally humanity. This harmonized well with the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, with whom Brand had spent time. NASA soon obliged.
In due course, Brand and his then-wife Lois Jennings organized a group of creative young people to assemble an unprecedented periodical, the Whole Earth Catalog. Launched in late 1968, it may be Brand’s most widely known accomplishment, and — as a crown jewel of the counterculture — it’s not hyperbolic for author Markoff to claim it had a rousing effect in the U.S. (As just one consequence, it inspired the projects of Apple founder Steve Jobs.)
Underlying principles included “whole systems,” (e.g., biospherics and ecology) and cultural adaptation. The Catalog’s subtitle read “Access to Tools,” specifically many books (reviewed) plus the lowdown about where to get information for doing everything from food-gardening to sewing clothing, from learning welding to delivering a baby, from applying first-aid to home-scale wind turbines… and a great deal more.
After the first issues, readers’ recommendations and reviews became typical items (a method emulated, no doubt, by Goodreads & Amazon). A young dream travelled where the young would take it! Importantly, networking (in this and other ways) was Brand’s métier during the decades after: publications that he edited (e.g., CoEvolution Quarterly), working as a "special advisor" in governor Jerry Brown’s brain trust, connecting with high-rollers in computer development, launching The Well (a pioneering online community), and, later on, his researches into learning, and in the Global Business Network (consulting for firms like Volvo) and the Long Now Foundation.
Markoff introduces many fascinating and influential people whom Brand learned from or worked with, among them Gregory Bateson, Ken Kesey, Dick Raymond, Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, Brian Eno, and Brand's wife Patty Phelan, not to mention Jeff Bezos and astronaut Rusty Schweickart.
I can’t say that I’ve agreed with all of Brand’s opinions or resonated with each of his phases. But his energetic, variegated, brilliant life makes for an engaging tale of a rugged individualist, a frontrunner, who came to deeply understand the value of cooperation and team work.
July 11, 2022
Ace! Some favourite 'Brandisms' from the epilogue —
—Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
—Introduction to the CoEvolution Quarterly, 1974
—Whole Earth Epilog, wraparound, 1974
—CoEvolution Quarterly, 1975
—First Hacker’s Conference, 1984
—Journal, 1985
—Journal, 1990
—Epigraph to Whole Earth Discipline, 2009
“We are as Gods and we might as well get used to it.”
“We are as Gods and we might as well get good at it.”
—Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
“After burning our bridges we reported before the Throne to announce: ‘We’re here for our next terrific idea.’ The Throne said, ‘That was it.’ ”
—Introduction to the CoEvolution Quarterly, 1974
“Ecology maintains. Coevolution learns.”
—Whole Earth Epilog, wraparound, 1974
“An old joke says that the lake with the longest name in the world is called—in a single native American word—‘You-fish-on-your-side-we’ll-fish-on-our-side-nobody-fish-in-the-middle.’ ‘Nobody fish in the middle’ is a formula for a perpetually livable planet.”
—CoEvolution Quarterly, 1975
“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”
—First Hacker’s Conference, 1984
“Charisma is theft. Commitment is a trap. If the group says, and means your life, ‘you’re either on the bus or off the bus,’ get off the bus.”
—Journal, 1985
“Judge a new building not just by what it is, but what it is capable of becoming. Judge an old building by how it has played its options.”
—Journal, 1990
“We are as gods and we HAVE to get good at it.”
—Epigraph to Whole Earth Discipline, 2009
May 3, 2022
It’s pretty stunning to understand how one person overlaps with or directly led so many parts of culture I find interesting. I appreciate how you learn about his development as a person, his views changing with time and new insights. Driven generally by the same questions, but approached in new ways.
January 13, 2024
Excellent biography. I thought I already knew a lot about Stewart Brand but learned a lot more from this well-rounded dive into his life. Appears the haters who wrote some of these reviews have either not read the book or brought so many preconceived ideas to it they couldn’t appreciate it.
November 14, 2022
John Markoff's Whole Earth is a biography of Stewart Brand. I was most interested in the section on Brand's book Whole Earth Discipline. How have greens changed since it was published in 2009?
Here are a couple of Whole Earth Discipline's arguments. First, Brand suggests that many greens unrealistically romanticize the past and seek to get back to it to save the planet. If only things were different... Second, Brand encourages greens to take the climate threat seriously enough to back some technological solutions, including urban density, nuclear energy, GMOs, and geoengineering. At the time, Brand's "eco-pragmatist" arguments were received about as warmly as when Dylan started playing electric guitar with a backing band on Bringing It All Back Home.
How popular are Brand's four positions today? Here, I mostly speculate.
Nuclear energy. If you plug scenarios into Hal Harvey's energy policy simulator, you'll quickly see that maintaining the current fleet of nuclear reactors is very important and building more reactors may still be a net emissions reduction, even if the building of a reactor takes a lot. When countries decommission their reactors, they are almost always replaced with coal and/ or natural gas, and it drives me crazy when greens think that advocating against nuclear will expand solar/ wind. Because Russia has been sanctioned by the West for its invasion of Ukraine, we've begun to see some progress on this issue as countries look for energy sources that aren't Russian natural gas (though some have opted for coal, sadly). France has declared that it will build more reactors, California seems to be softening on its determination to shut down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (still not settled), and Germany now seems poised to extend the life of its reactors (hopefully they will come to their senses and extend them). Do we see a shift in the media? Maybe. Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith seems to support extending the use of these reactors, but he also recently posted a column arguing that solar really is a better investment than new nuclear reactors in 2022. I mostly don't see the liberal parties embracing nuclear energy, though sometimes conservatives will express enthusiasm for advanced nuclear. I worry that conservatives express support for nuclear just so they can say something, but really they couldn't care less. (Prove me wrong.)
GMOs. Ezra Klein is a vegan primarily for animal cruelty reasons, but he is very optimistic about lab grown meat. I see less "GMOs, oh no!" sentiment amongst my students than I used to. Maybe opposition is waning.
Urban density. Because housing is very expensive from British Columbia south to California, I see more and more greens happy to endorse YIMBY positions and some awareness that environmental policies have been hijacked to advance NIMBY positions. But I also still see reports of environmental groups supporting the expansion of transmission lines while opposing it actually being built (presumably transmission lines should be built, but not in their backyard). Bill McKibbon just posted on twitter that he is opposed to permitting reform plans in the Inflation Reduction Act, but almost every reply to that tweet was "permitting reform is good." Finally, as a general rule, greens seem to love posting pictures of biophilic design.
Geoengineering. I think most greens are still very skeptical of geoengineering. Elizabeth Kolbert's most recent book, Under a White Sky, is hardly enthusiastic. Ecomodernists, however, seem increasingly open to the concept. Neal Stephenson's last book, Termination Shock, is all about solar radiation management and it does not express a "you were so busy thinking about whether you could you didn't stop to think whether you should" moral. Kim Stanley Robinson seems open to geoengineering. And Ezra Klein, again, has also welcomed guests onto his show to explore the idea of at least researching this technology.
It's tough to know how this all nets out amongst the big tent that we identify when we say "environmentalists." But in each of the four cases for techno optimism, perhaps we are seeing that a lot of prominent greens have nudged closer to Brand's position over the last 13 years. Hopefully, they will continue to do so. My own view, if you haven't guessed, is that climate change is a massive problem and I'm happy to see quite a wide range of solutions employed. To paraphrase Mark Jaccard's Citizen's Guide to Climate Success, the best policies and solutions will be the ones that are actually adopted. That's a pragmatic statement, something that Brand gets right in Whole Earth Discipline.
Here are a couple of Whole Earth Discipline's arguments. First, Brand suggests that many greens unrealistically romanticize the past and seek to get back to it to save the planet. If only things were different... Second, Brand encourages greens to take the climate threat seriously enough to back some technological solutions, including urban density, nuclear energy, GMOs, and geoengineering. At the time, Brand's "eco-pragmatist" arguments were received about as warmly as when Dylan started playing electric guitar with a backing band on Bringing It All Back Home.
How popular are Brand's four positions today? Here, I mostly speculate.
Nuclear energy. If you plug scenarios into Hal Harvey's energy policy simulator, you'll quickly see that maintaining the current fleet of nuclear reactors is very important and building more reactors may still be a net emissions reduction, even if the building of a reactor takes a lot. When countries decommission their reactors, they are almost always replaced with coal and/ or natural gas, and it drives me crazy when greens think that advocating against nuclear will expand solar/ wind. Because Russia has been sanctioned by the West for its invasion of Ukraine, we've begun to see some progress on this issue as countries look for energy sources that aren't Russian natural gas (though some have opted for coal, sadly). France has declared that it will build more reactors, California seems to be softening on its determination to shut down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (still not settled), and Germany now seems poised to extend the life of its reactors (hopefully they will come to their senses and extend them). Do we see a shift in the media? Maybe. Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith seems to support extending the use of these reactors, but he also recently posted a column arguing that solar really is a better investment than new nuclear reactors in 2022. I mostly don't see the liberal parties embracing nuclear energy, though sometimes conservatives will express enthusiasm for advanced nuclear. I worry that conservatives express support for nuclear just so they can say something, but really they couldn't care less. (Prove me wrong.)
GMOs. Ezra Klein is a vegan primarily for animal cruelty reasons, but he is very optimistic about lab grown meat. I see less "GMOs, oh no!" sentiment amongst my students than I used to. Maybe opposition is waning.
Urban density. Because housing is very expensive from British Columbia south to California, I see more and more greens happy to endorse YIMBY positions and some awareness that environmental policies have been hijacked to advance NIMBY positions. But I also still see reports of environmental groups supporting the expansion of transmission lines while opposing it actually being built (presumably transmission lines should be built, but not in their backyard). Bill McKibbon just posted on twitter that he is opposed to permitting reform plans in the Inflation Reduction Act, but almost every reply to that tweet was "permitting reform is good." Finally, as a general rule, greens seem to love posting pictures of biophilic design.
Geoengineering. I think most greens are still very skeptical of geoengineering. Elizabeth Kolbert's most recent book, Under a White Sky, is hardly enthusiastic. Ecomodernists, however, seem increasingly open to the concept. Neal Stephenson's last book, Termination Shock, is all about solar radiation management and it does not express a "you were so busy thinking about whether you could you didn't stop to think whether you should" moral. Kim Stanley Robinson seems open to geoengineering. And Ezra Klein, again, has also welcomed guests onto his show to explore the idea of at least researching this technology.
It's tough to know how this all nets out amongst the big tent that we identify when we say "environmentalists." But in each of the four cases for techno optimism, perhaps we are seeing that a lot of prominent greens have nudged closer to Brand's position over the last 13 years. Hopefully, they will continue to do so. My own view, if you haven't guessed, is that climate change is a massive problem and I'm happy to see quite a wide range of solutions employed. To paraphrase Mark Jaccard's Citizen's Guide to Climate Success, the best policies and solutions will be the ones that are actually adopted. That's a pragmatic statement, something that Brand gets right in Whole Earth Discipline.
December 27, 2022
Inspiring
August 27, 2022
Stewart Brand is a uniquely thought-provoking individual shown in all his triumphs and missteps. He has mystified and enraged people over his long life because he is an example of a person who truly thinks. This means that over the decades his opinions have shifted as more information became available to him. The author does an excellent job of allowing the reader to surf in the stream of thought that made this person so impactful.
The life of Stewart Brand is an incredible tale of a man who was as the forefront of political and technical change; from hanging with Ken Kesey, to being selected as an LSD research subject, then publishing The Whole Earth Catalogue, being a very-early predictor of the social and technical upheaval he saw coming in computing, building the WELL, arguably the first social networked online community, then discovering before anyone else that anonymous posting online deteriorates into pointless flame wars, building investigational organizations to satisfy his ravenous curiosity, and finally, my favorite, being one of the founders of THE LONG NOW FOUNDATION building a clock that will run for 10,000 years as an exercise in long-term thinking. Oh yeah, he wrote books on architecture, environmentalism, and urban planning all of which were controversial.
This is a book that will educate you about the man Stewart Brand, and force you to confront the ideas that he brought forth. A very good book indeed!
The life of Stewart Brand is an incredible tale of a man who was as the forefront of political and technical change; from hanging with Ken Kesey, to being selected as an LSD research subject, then publishing The Whole Earth Catalogue, being a very-early predictor of the social and technical upheaval he saw coming in computing, building the WELL, arguably the first social networked online community, then discovering before anyone else that anonymous posting online deteriorates into pointless flame wars, building investigational organizations to satisfy his ravenous curiosity, and finally, my favorite, being one of the founders of THE LONG NOW FOUNDATION building a clock that will run for 10,000 years as an exercise in long-term thinking. Oh yeah, he wrote books on architecture, environmentalism, and urban planning all of which were controversial.
This is a book that will educate you about the man Stewart Brand, and force you to confront the ideas that he brought forth. A very good book indeed!
July 29, 2022
I loved traveling through the 60s and 70s via the life of one of the shapers of those decades, Stewart Brand. And then continuing on through the birth of Silicon Valley, with its booms and busts. Brand even came up with the term “personal computer,” for heaven's sake.
Reading this makes me grateful to Markoff’s diligent research and professional writing, which steps out of the way so that the reader sees the subject seemingly through no glass at all. I am also grateful to Brand for allowing the author access to his personal journals, letters and emails.
For all his rather amazing accomplishments, Brand comes across as quite human, as we see him wrestle his own demons. And it’s uplifting to learn about such an accomplished thinker who is, nevertheless, willing to change his mind on important matters (such as nuclear power) even though it meant alienating friends and reaping a harvest of public criticism.
Brand is a model of someone who leads a well-read life (a term of my own coining in my role as co-founder of Levenger) meaning someone who reads and acts in roughly equal proportions throughout their life. Louis L'amour said it best: “Read, read, read. Do, do, do.” Stewart Brand did it best.
The world needs more Stewart Brands. Unfortunately, we get only one.
Reading this makes me grateful to Markoff’s diligent research and professional writing, which steps out of the way so that the reader sees the subject seemingly through no glass at all. I am also grateful to Brand for allowing the author access to his personal journals, letters and emails.
For all his rather amazing accomplishments, Brand comes across as quite human, as we see him wrestle his own demons. And it’s uplifting to learn about such an accomplished thinker who is, nevertheless, willing to change his mind on important matters (such as nuclear power) even though it meant alienating friends and reaping a harvest of public criticism.
Brand is a model of someone who leads a well-read life (a term of my own coining in my role as co-founder of Levenger) meaning someone who reads and acts in roughly equal proportions throughout their life. Louis L'amour said it best: “Read, read, read. Do, do, do.” Stewart Brand did it best.
The world needs more Stewart Brands. Unfortunately, we get only one.
May 15, 2022
I had the honor of working with Stewart Brand for 20 years at Global Business Network, one of the many bold undertakings that Stewart helped launch (so far) in his remarkable life. Stewart is a serial visionary who not only imagines what's possible years before anyone else--but sets it in motion for the rest of us to iterate, improve or mess up. Markoff's excellent biography chronicles Stewart's own evolution and importantly, places it in context of a co-evolving society: environmentalism; the counterculture (lots of fun--including mind-expanding drugs, music, experiences); the dawn of personal computing and the hacker mentality; the rise of the Internet; the genetic revolution--and so much more. Woven throughout are several key themes: a deep commitment to long-term thinking (1000 years) and challenging conventional wisdom, providing access to tools, and always learning. This book is an epic learning journey through the life, impact and times of an iconic character-- a journey well worth taking!
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September 9, 2023
Stewart Brand has led a remarkably interesting life, and by all accounts is a pretty interesting person. It's surprising then that John Markoff, fine journalist that he is, made this biography of Brand a tedious slog. But there you have it. Part of the problem is Markoff's dry, encyclopedic recitation of facts, especially concerning Brand's early life. By comparison, I also recently finished American Prometheus, the outstanding bio of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It's dense and brimming with detail, but still maintains an element of suspense, excitement, and forward motion, Perhaps it's not fair to compare this to the Oppenheimer bio since it did win the Pulitzer Prize, but it just shows how it can be done. I will say this, Markoff makes Brand seem like not such a pleasant fellow to be around, at least in his younger years. In fact, he comes across as a real jerk in places. So I guess Markoff was successful at dimming my hero worship of Brand somewhat.
June 6, 2022
Stewart Brand, tho born in 1938, epitomized the post WWII generation. Born in the American heartland, he arrived on the West Coast in time to try LSD in 1960. He hung out with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, helped birth the Summer of Love, edited the National Book Award-winning Whole Earth Catalog, befriended Marlon Brando, David Crosby, Pat Brown & Steve Jobs, started the famed pre-internet online community TheWELL, helped promote the PC, was imvolved with the American Indian movement & Friends of the Earth, helped start Burning Man, & currently is building an atomic clock on the Navajo Reservation in Utah. In other words, he was a Zelig-like presence thru-out the 2nd half of the 20th century in the US. This is the 1st biography dedicated to a man who personified the postwar California zeitgeist.
April 30, 2023
Stewart Brand's best known for [fill in the sentence here depending on which Stewart Brand you're aware of--the most common answer is probably, as the title of this entertaining biography suggests, the Whole Earth Catalog, but he's also important in the LSD culture of the Bay Area, of building bridges between the counterculture and American Indians, of the development of virtual reality....interesting guy to say the least.]. Markoff, whose book What the Dormouse Said is one of the great histories of the rise of computer culture in the 60s and 70s--hippies played an important part in it--is the right one to write Brand's story and he carries it off well.
October 11, 2023
"The Whole Earth Catalog is nearly unreadable as a book, but that wasn’t its point. Brand believed that people could do anything with “access to tools” and the catalog was built on a libertarian DIY attitude, its contents sorted with dispatch into “function” and “purpose.” The intended audience were those nature-loving, privileged readers who read the opening sentence, “We are as gods and might as well get used to it,” and could feel Brand’s vision of hardy, can-do confidence applied to their own meritocratic beliefs." -Jamie Cohen
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-j...
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-j...
October 18, 2022
When I was a kid, stumbling on the Whole Earth Catalog kinda blew my mind. I knew nothing about Brand prior to reading this bio and was surprised to learn about his background in the military. His ability to be around multiple big moments in history is interesting and reminded me of Quincy Jones.
I need to check out Brand’s book How Buildings Learn since it’s mentioned alongside A Pattern Language (which amazed me) and The Death and Life of American Cities (which has been on my shelf for at least ten years asking for attention.)
Shout out to Mrs. Danvers for putting this on my radar.
I need to check out Brand’s book How Buildings Learn since it’s mentioned alongside A Pattern Language (which amazed me) and The Death and Life of American Cities (which has been on my shelf for at least ten years asking for attention.)
Shout out to Mrs. Danvers for putting this on my radar.
January 28, 2023
Exhaustive. I hate to say it but the one thing it lacks is much, if any, feeling for the man himself. Or any real sense of the man. Instead it is one crazy, wonderful, stupid, inspiring, thing after another. Meanwhile, before I finished the book, I listened to a "Long Now" podcast with Markoff and Brand. Brand comes across fantastically. Warm, intense, deep, and very likeable. So. Sorry to say, I got that in ten minutes listening to him. Almost none of that in two months of reading the book.
December 3, 2023
I thought I knew who Stewart Brand was from The Well and Whole Earth Catalog. Silly me. The range of his experiences and accomplishments and the extent of his quirkiness and his tendency to do 180s is astonishing. I had no idea he wrote a book on architecture which has become a classic, for example. He knew everybody who was anybody in the early days of the counterculture and personal computing. Definitely a fascinating read for those of us who came of age in the 60s and 70s.
March 31, 2024
Very informative biography of a person whose "Whole Earth Catalog" series figured large in my adolescence. I spent many hours leafing through the pages, stopping to pore over sections I'd not studied before, learning a great deal about (today mostly outdated) technologies. It's nice to see that Brand continued to do interesting work in fields few were pursuing. I'd like to visit the Long Now clock sometime, too.
May 30, 2022
Just ok. I'm a long-time fan/watcher of Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and Brand's book How Buildings Learn. I've also enjoyed author John Markoff's reporting over the years.
Brand's life is revealed to be fairly prosaic; what Brand did has value, but the story of Brand's life as told in this book is more pedestrian. Markoff had extensive interviews with Brand, but the resulting book is serviceable but not inspiring.
Brand's life is revealed to be fairly prosaic; what Brand did has value, but the story of Brand's life as told in this book is more pedestrian. Markoff had extensive interviews with Brand, but the resulting book is serviceable but not inspiring.
April 11, 2022
Many lives, indeed. Stewart Brand has left an indelible mark on American culture. Veteran tech reporter John Markoff is the perfect choice to tell his story.
https://nobhillgazette.com/literature...
https://nobhillgazette.com/literature...
June 18, 2022
If you're interesting in the cultural side of early computer history, Markoff is very much worth reading, and while there's some overlap, this book covers a different slice of the story than *What the Doormouse Said*.
November 17, 2022
Thoroughly enjoyed, am deeply inspired by, and resonated with his choices and quests. Lots of fun anecdotes/stories about the halcyon hippie days of San Francisco. The most proficient knot is the one most easily untied. Ecology maintains, co-evolution learns.
December 12, 2022
A detailed history of Stewart Brand who is a Zelig-like person and has been involved in every counterculture event since the 50s. He’s still going strong in his 80s working on the 10,000 year clock with the Long Now Foundation.
Want to read
March 30, 2022Tianyu March 2022
April 28, 2022
His journey of life is the best reminder that “we are as Gods (of our own lives) and might as well get good at it.”
June 3, 2022
Remarkable book about a remarkable man.
June 26, 2022
Read 60 percent but giving up now because I'm so bored.
Read
June 26, 2022Great book! For all of the peripatetic efforts Brand came up with, he certainly made people think, and still is.
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