Copyfighting video archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "The WholeEartharati are convening for a public panel on 11/9 at Stanford. The event's going to be moderated by Fred Turner, author of the new book From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, and the eminent panelists will be Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold. Like many others, the Catalog and its successors played a major role in my development — I'll definitely be there."
Count me among those who were heavily influenced by the Catalogs. I have a complete set in a storage locker in Toronto. I used to pore through them for hours on rainy days, marvelling at the flowering of the mission of "access to tools and ideas." And when a friend slipped me the "Is the Body Obsolete?" issue of the Whole Earth Review in the 80s, I knew I'd found something special, a publication about something that I had always hoped was out there, but had never found. Even now, I have a WELL account!
(Thanks, Rick!)
