There was good money to be made as a beatnik
July 6, 2022 5:53 AM Subscribe
Stewart Brand is not a scientist. He’s not an artist, an engineer, or a programmer. Nor is he much of a writer or editor, though as the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, that’s what he’s best known for. Brand, 83, is a huckster—one of the great hucksters in a time and place full of them.
The Zen Playboy by Malcolm Harris (previously) is a review of Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. It discusses the life and right-wing political views of Stewart Brand, who was one of the pioneers of The Californian Ideology (Wikipedia summary for those who prefer it).
The Zen Playboy by Malcolm Harris (previously) is a review of Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. It discusses the life and right-wing political views of Stewart Brand, who was one of the pioneers of The Californian Ideology (Wikipedia summary for those who prefer it).
Throughout the book, people who meet Stewart Brand often disappear from his life so fast that it’s as if they were repelled by an unseen force.
Wow, that's fierce.
I remember being very influenced by How Buildings Learn. I assumed Brand was qualified by something, at least in the Buckminster Fuller sense of having so many ideas that some of them stuck.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:17 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wow, that's fierce.
I remember being very influenced by How Buildings Learn. I assumed Brand was qualified by something, at least in the Buckminster Fuller sense of having so many ideas that some of them stuck.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:17 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I saw Brand give a speech in London at the ICA in the late 2000s/early 2010s. He said we should solve electricity access problems by putting nuclear reactors on boats and floating them up and down rivers. The whole earth catalogue was a genuinely interesting set of ideas at the right time; everything else that Brand has done has not been so fortunate. He deserves an uncharitable review at best.
posted by The River Ivel at 6:30 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 6:30 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
I didn't know that this was the epigraph to the Whole Earth Catalog, but it puts it all into context. Holy shit, the hubris of that statement! The sentiment it expresses is literally one of the sins that the word hubris referred to in Ancient Greece: a transgression against the divine, born of arrogance. It's this kind of hubris that offers justification for the blithe, unthinking abuse and destruction of people and nature. I don't want to read too much into it, but then again, Brand CHOSE that statement as his epigraph. There's a straight line between "we are as gods and might as well get good at it" and "move fast and break things."
posted by cubeb at 6:47 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I didn't know that this was the epigraph to the Whole Earth Catalog, but it puts it all into context. Holy shit, the hubris of that statement! The sentiment it expresses is literally one of the sins that the word hubris referred to in Ancient Greece: a transgression against the divine, born of arrogance. It's this kind of hubris that offers justification for the blithe, unthinking abuse and destruction of people and nature. I don't want to read too much into it, but then again, Brand CHOSE that statement as his epigraph. There's a straight line between "we are as gods and might as well get good at it" and "move fast and break things."
posted by cubeb at 6:47 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
He cofounded The Well, which I think of as a spiritual forebear to Metafilter.
This is a strange hit piece. It reads like those negative political campaign mailers where even the most benign aspects of your opponent are twisted into sneering (but empty) indictments. It's a shame because a fair, honest investigation into Brand's life and times could have illuminated both the positive and negative aspects of the many groups and ideas he's been involved with.
posted by gwint at 6:48 AM on July 6, 2022 [20 favorites]
This is a strange hit piece. It reads like those negative political campaign mailers where even the most benign aspects of your opponent are twisted into sneering (but empty) indictments. It's a shame because a fair, honest investigation into Brand's life and times could have illuminated both the positive and negative aspects of the many groups and ideas he's been involved with.
posted by gwint at 6:48 AM on July 6, 2022 [20 favorites]
Here's my nope-out point:
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM on July 6, 2022 [16 favorites]
In a place where similarly bright-eyed young men of all sorts formed ambitious lifelong partnerships with their chums, Stewart—who had access to plenty of resources and could have used the disciplined focus of a contrasting partner—didn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder: Was this guy an asshole?There are probably more serious critiques to be written about Brand's brand of techno-utopianism, but not by this guy.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM on July 6, 2022 [16 favorites]
Here's the larger quote from the 1968 Whole Earth Catalog, the arrogant bit about "we are as gods" is matched to a call to "the power of individuals"
We are as Gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains, personal power is developing — the power of individuals to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment, and share the adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog.posted by Nelson at 7:00 AM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
That's been true from the moment Homo sapiens started driving the extinction of megafauna. The proper conclusion from this adage isn't "move fast and break things", which we've done for about 10,000 years. It's on the other end of the spectrum of human endeavor: "measure twice, cut once." Which is what Stewart Brand aimed to help with his books.
Brand deserves criticism, as do we all, but hit pieces like this should only be written against people who are up to something. Dude's retired, FFS.
posted by ocschwar at 7:06 AM on July 6, 2022 [21 favorites]
That's been true from the moment Homo sapiens started driving the extinction of megafauna. The proper conclusion from this adage isn't "move fast and break things", which we've done for about 10,000 years. It's on the other end of the spectrum of human endeavor: "measure twice, cut once." Which is what Stewart Brand aimed to help with his books.
Brand deserves criticism, as do we all, but hit pieces like this should only be written against people who are up to something. Dude's retired, FFS.
posted by ocschwar at 7:06 AM on July 6, 2022 [21 favorites]
I have mostly positive feelings toward Stewart Brand, though I don't know all his work very well. I'm a great fan of How Buildings Learn (but I've heard that actual architects have pretty mixed reviews).
And I might be in the minority here, but I like a good takedown--I'd even go as far as to say that it's a proper response to a fawning, overly credulous hagiography, which, at a glance, it looks like Whole Earth might be.
posted by box at 7:23 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
And I might be in the minority here, but I like a good takedown--I'd even go as far as to say that it's a proper response to a fawning, overly credulous hagiography, which, at a glance, it looks like Whole Earth might be.
posted by box at 7:23 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
there is a reason we've had a word for it for thousands of years
whatever you think of hubris, and whatever we are, we do need to do better
of all the details to fixate on, that one is (to me) not interesting
posted by elkevelvet at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2022
whatever you think of hubris, and whatever we are, we do need to do better
of all the details to fixate on, that one is (to me) not interesting
posted by elkevelvet at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2022
Still, the Whole Earth Catalog was a marvel to read. I was in my early twenties when it came along. I spent hours reading it.
posted by Czjewel at 8:17 AM on July 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Czjewel at 8:17 AM on July 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
Hmm. This doesn't quite describe the Stewart Brand I've listened to for many tens of hours and spoken to a few times. (But, thanks for the interesting post.) He certainly has some bad ideas and many unambiguously shitty friends. But, also goes out of his way to celebrate genuinely leftist ideas and asks questions in a way that suggests a far less meager talent than most people I've met. Bilking google managers in order to remind people that history is long isn't the worst grift. He is the contemporary Fabian.
I hope that when I'm 80 and famous the dumb shit I did in college isn't in the papers.
posted by eotvos at 8:22 AM on July 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
I hope that when I'm 80 and famous the dumb shit I did in college isn't in the papers.
posted by eotvos at 8:22 AM on July 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
Throughout the book, people who meet Stewart Brand often disappear from his life so fast that it’s as if they were repelled by an unseen force.
Wow, that's fierce.
And uncalled for. If I managed to unload an idea onto some flaneur or socialite like Stewart Brand (or Neal Stephenson, Ted Nelson, Greta Thunberg or any other such person), then decades later I might get a cursory mention in that person's biography and promptly disappear from it. That's just the way of the world.
posted by ocschwar at 8:34 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wow, that's fierce.
And uncalled for. If I managed to unload an idea onto some flaneur or socialite like Stewart Brand (or Neal Stephenson, Ted Nelson, Greta Thunberg or any other such person), then decades later I might get a cursory mention in that person's biography and promptly disappear from it. That's just the way of the world.
posted by ocschwar at 8:34 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Brand is a complicated guy with some apparent long standing blindspots to his own privilege and, in some cases, about where he has been wrong in the past, but this is a hatchet job. Based solely on How Buildings Learn and his work on the WEC and "CoEvolution Quarterly", Harris' claim that Brand, "[isn't] much of a writer or editor" fails to stand up. He has a knack for creating durable, influential ideas and turns of phrase.
That said, the Markoff bio is Silicon Valley fanboy hagiography, for the most part, and I found it hard to choke down. While waiting for a clear-eyed, critical biography, Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism and Andrew Kirk's Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism get closer to a useful mark.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:37 AM on July 6, 2022 [19 favorites]
That said, the Markoff bio is Silicon Valley fanboy hagiography, for the most part, and I found it hard to choke down. While waiting for a clear-eyed, critical biography, Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism and Andrew Kirk's Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism get closer to a useful mark.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:37 AM on July 6, 2022 [19 favorites]
but I've heard that actual architects have pretty mixed reviews
How Buildings Learn is, among other things, a broadside against much of professional architecture as it's currently practiced (or was in the 80s and early 90s), so this isn't surprising. The related TV series, presented and written by Brand, is another bit of evidence that - whether or not you agree with his conclusions - he's a clear and compelling communicator.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:45 AM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
How Buildings Learn is, among other things, a broadside against much of professional architecture as it's currently practiced (or was in the 80s and early 90s), so this isn't surprising. The related TV series, presented and written by Brand, is another bit of evidence that - whether or not you agree with his conclusions - he's a clear and compelling communicator.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:45 AM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
All that and they didn't even have to get into his recent involvement with cryptocurrency/NFTs.
I thought that put a pretty clear coda on his legacy. "Come learn about my history! And in order to watch this documentary on my history, you need to set fire to 20 gallons of gasoline. Don't worry though, I can assure you the price on this ticket will go up, and you'll be able to set fire to another 20 gallons passing it to someone else!"
posted by CrystalDave at 9:11 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I thought that put a pretty clear coda on his legacy. "Come learn about my history! And in order to watch this documentary on my history, you need to set fire to 20 gallons of gasoline. Don't worry though, I can assure you the price on this ticket will go up, and you'll be able to set fire to another 20 gallons passing it to someone else!"
posted by CrystalDave at 9:11 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't have patience for TFA. I started reading it and quickly gave up. Because the whole thrust of the first few paras is "Stewart Brand did nothing worth remembering," while quietly slipping in references to a couple of pretty damned big things that Stewart Brand assuredly did, which are definitely worth remembering. In fact, I don't remember him for any of the other shit, just the WEC and the WELL. Everything else was after his 15 minutes was over.
Also: there is a lot of presentism about the WEC and its time from people who weren't born until after it was out of print. I take solace from knowing that those people will in turn be ridiculed in times to come, by their ignorant successors. If we don't kill the world first, which if more people had paid more attention to the kind of thing that was in the WEC maybe we would not be facing that.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:13 AM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
Also: there is a lot of presentism about the WEC and its time from people who weren't born until after it was out of print. I take solace from knowing that those people will in turn be ridiculed in times to come, by their ignorant successors. If we don't kill the world first, which if more people had paid more attention to the kind of thing that was in the WEC maybe we would not be facing that.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:13 AM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
Also, the "We are as gods" thing, in context, reminds me quite a bit of the Nietzsche quote, usually shortened to the first three words, much beloved of fundamentalists with axes to grind:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?posted by Halloween Jack at 9:18 AM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
Nietzsche is a very apt comparison there because people who aren't very clever look at the very first three words (as they do at the Brand statement) and take it as normative. God should be dead, we should kill him. That isn't what Nietzsche meant at all, his point was that having stripped the idea of the divine from our lives, we needed to replace it with something else.
Similarly, it's pretty clear to me that the first part of Brand's statement "We are as gods" is intended as a statement of fact rather than intent and is there to motivate the second part. If we don't accept that our collective power over nature is vast, as indeed certain religious groups effectively don't, then what obligation do we have to manage it? Managing nature is for god[s]. That's the point.
posted by atrazine at 9:56 AM on July 6, 2022 [12 favorites]
Similarly, it's pretty clear to me that the first part of Brand's statement "We are as gods" is intended as a statement of fact rather than intent and is there to motivate the second part. If we don't accept that our collective power over nature is vast, as indeed certain religious groups effectively don't, then what obligation do we have to manage it? Managing nature is for god[s]. That's the point.
posted by atrazine at 9:56 AM on July 6, 2022 [12 favorites]
“What he had,” Markoff writes, “just as he had had as a child, was an unending stream of notions.”Finally, something in the article I can relate to.
posted by clawsoon at 10:22 AM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
Wow. What a hit job from start to finish.
posted by doctornemo at 10:36 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 10:36 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also: there is a lot of presentism about the WEC and its time from people who weren't born until after it was out of print. I take solace from knowing that those people will in turn be ridiculed in times to come, by their ignorant successors. If we don't kill the world first, which if more people had paid more attention to the kind of thing that was in the WEC maybe we would not be facing that.Presentism is the price of success — as one of those people born after the WEC went out of print, the reason I am interested in it is because you can draw a fairly straight line from WEC to WIRED to dotcom culture to the harms of silicon valley today, from labor regulation arbitrage to proof-of-work to the AI-doomsday cult of rationalism. My belief is that if you want to understand these things, you need to understand their history, and Stewart Brand, Whole Earth, and their conception of "tools" is a important part of that history.
It's bizarre to me to say that you take solace in knowing that the next generation will be ridiculed, as though that's something that is negative — I should hope that whatever mistakes I make will be put on display, so that the next generation can learn from those, just as I've learned so much about how not to think from the WEC and techno-utopianism succeeding it.
posted by wesleyac at 10:37 AM on July 6, 2022 [5 favorites]
The author's main objection to Brand, for those of you who couldn't make it through the article, seems to centre around this and the light that the review author thinks it sheds on Brand's character and politics:
Before he knew it, Brand was on a Shell oil platform, helping the company’s managers find an innovative way to restructure the workforce, despite the labor union’s objections. In the second half of his life, Brand betrayed everything he’d ever embraced in the first half, with the notable exception of capitalism, of which he’s remained in favor.posted by clawsoon at 10:39 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
wesleyac: the reason I am interested in it is because you can draw a fairly straight line from WEC to WIRED to dotcom culture to the harms of silicon valley today, from labor regulation arbitrage to proof-of-work to the AI-doomsday cult of rationalism.
This sounds like it would make for a good Adam Curtis documentary.
and their conception of "tools" is a important part of that history.
For someone who's not familiar with WEC, could you expand on this conception of "tools" and how it ties into all the stuff you mentioned?
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on July 6, 2022
This sounds like it would make for a good Adam Curtis documentary.
and their conception of "tools" is a important part of that history.
For someone who's not familiar with WEC, could you expand on this conception of "tools" and how it ties into all the stuff you mentioned?
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on July 6, 2022
Archive.org has a browsable (and downloadable) version of the WEC: Whole Earth Catalog (fall 1968) - complete
posted by gwint at 10:55 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by gwint at 10:55 AM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Pretty much everyone I knew who graduated college in the late 60s to the mid-70s, and wasn't a business major, had a copy of WEC. Anyway, it was a common item to see on bookshelves anywhere you went. My cousin had one, and it fascinated the hell out of early-teen me. I would pour through it constantly, whenever I visited them.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:09 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 11:09 AM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
For someone who's not familiar with WEC, could you expand on this conception of "tools" and how it ties into all the stuff you mentioned?So, WEC had the slogan "access to tools," which was sort of fundamentally what the whole project was about — it is a catalog of tools, with the idea that these tools will be used to build a better world. The idea of computers as tools is fundamental to the mythos of silicon valley. Nearly everyone in the tech industry, from Apple and Google to the free software/open source movement, think of themselves as building tools. Steve Jobs talked explicitly about growing up with WEC shaping his vision of Apple as providing tools, and I suspect that the WEC shaped many others in his cohort of tech CEOs and idols.
The problem is, tools are not things that are ideologically neutral. Tools amplify power, and the way that tools are built shapes how they are used. Stewart Brand, of course, couldn't have this — as he's quoted in that article: “No politics, no religion, and no art” allowed in the Whole Earth Catalog.
What does that mean, to have tools without politics? It's simply not possible — tools come with ideology built-in, whether you ignore it or not.
The result is that silicon valley has spent decades building tools that serve to accrue power to the people who already have the most of it, under the libertarian guise that this is neutrality.
Tim Cook said in 2019:
We've always believed that by giving people wonderful tools, you enable them to do wonderful things. At Apple we put the customer at the center of everything that we do, with products and technologies that are designed in the service of humanity.When an Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard, are they more free for it? Who does that tool serve — the driver, or Uber? That's a question Apple would rather you not think about. All they're doing is providing tools, and access to tools is going to save the world. I'm sure we don't need to worry about how they're used. No politics, no religion, and no art.
posted by wesleyac at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2022 [21 favorites]
When an Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard, are they more free for it?
That is really really dependent on context. When that Uber driver used to have to borrow a taxi medallion, take on all the risk of a bad shift (fuel, time, et cetera), and get paid even less, then yes, they are more free. For just one example.
It's not just the tools have have a built in ideology. It's also the environment into which they have been brought in.
posted by ocschwar at 11:33 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
That is really really dependent on context. When that Uber driver used to have to borrow a taxi medallion, take on all the risk of a bad shift (fuel, time, et cetera), and get paid even less, then yes, they are more free. For just one example.
It's not just the tools have have a built in ideology. It's also the environment into which they have been brought in.
posted by ocschwar at 11:33 AM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
You can draw a fairly straight line from WEC to WIRED to dotcom culture to the harms of silicon valley today
It might be possible to draw such a line but it certainly isn't straight, and the twists and turns in that line were influenced by many factors that were more powerful than WEC or Brand.
If this is intended as criticism of the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand as they were in 1968, then the reasoning is anachronistic and ... bizarre. Come on, browse through the 1968 WEC linked above, try to imagine it is 1968 and you can't know what is going to happen in the next 50+ years. Can you really see an
"Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard" foreshadowed there?
posted by JonJacky at 11:36 AM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
It might be possible to draw such a line but it certainly isn't straight, and the twists and turns in that line were influenced by many factors that were more powerful than WEC or Brand.
If this is intended as criticism of the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand as they were in 1968, then the reasoning is anachronistic and ... bizarre. Come on, browse through the 1968 WEC linked above, try to imagine it is 1968 and you can't know what is going to happen in the next 50+ years. Can you really see an
"Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard" foreshadowed there?
posted by JonJacky at 11:36 AM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm all here for a criticism of the California ideology and how all the technoutopian excitement of the late 90s resulted in the grim Facebook-shaped hellscape we live in today. Sadly, this article about Brand does not illuminate much on that topic other than trying to poke holes in the reputation of one of the early icons. I wonder if Harris' upcoming book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World will be more enlightening and go past whatever grudge he bears against Brand personally.
My take is the reason the tech world is a hellscape now is mostly about the money. Specifically the shift starting around 1998 when folks realized there was a lot of money to be made building out the Internet, and then in the 2010 era when all the MBA schmucks stopped gunning for McKinsey jobs and started looking to be the next techbro product manager at a rocketship unicorn. But then that's some simplistic nostalgia on my part. I also think the libertarian streak that characterized a lot of early Internet culture (myself included) has a lot to answer for.
Anyway, neither profit-seeking nor libertarianism can be blamed on Brand really. Although he certainly has not been shy in his later career in seeking out wealthy consultancies for unpalatable clients.
posted by Nelson at 12:05 PM on July 6, 2022 [5 favorites]
My take is the reason the tech world is a hellscape now is mostly about the money. Specifically the shift starting around 1998 when folks realized there was a lot of money to be made building out the Internet, and then in the 2010 era when all the MBA schmucks stopped gunning for McKinsey jobs and started looking to be the next techbro product manager at a rocketship unicorn. But then that's some simplistic nostalgia on my part. I also think the libertarian streak that characterized a lot of early Internet culture (myself included) has a lot to answer for.
Anyway, neither profit-seeking nor libertarianism can be blamed on Brand really. Although he certainly has not been shy in his later career in seeking out wealthy consultancies for unpalatable clients.
posted by Nelson at 12:05 PM on July 6, 2022 [5 favorites]
If this is intended as criticism of the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand as they were in 1968, then the reasoning is anachronistic and ... bizarre.That post was criticism of present day silicon valley, which I think can trace much of its ideology back to the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand. I don't personally think that it matters how clear the impacts of that ideology were at the time, for what I want to understand. But for what it's worth, while the exact forms that the impact would take were obviously not predictable, the larger picture, I think, was. Karl Marx was writing about "access to tools" (in different words) in the 1800s, with a notably much less individualistic bent than Stewart Brand. When seen form that perspective, Malcolm Harris' description of Brand as "born into an ownership-class family" reveals a potential reason for that difference.
And for what it's worth, you don't need to hypothetically put yourself back in 1968 to see if the criticism would make sense then: Jay Bonner, while working on the catalog complained to Stewart Brand that the "no politics, no religion, no art" was nonsensical:
Bonner then pointed out that Catalog offered all three: the art was fine art or craft; the religion, Eastern; the politics, libertarian. "From all the 128 pages of the Whole Earth Catalog there emerges an unmentioned political viewpoint," wrote Bonner. "The whole feeling of escapism which the catalog conveys is to me unfortunate."(that quote is from From Counterculture to Cyberculture)
I do understand that the article in the OP is a hit piece — I'm a fan of the genre, and I have no particular fondness for Brand, so it's easy for me to ignore some of the more uncharitable parts. But it is surprising to me to see so much defense of him here, when his politics are quite fundamentally libertarian — something I'm not used to seeing much support for on Metafilter.
posted by wesleyac at 12:41 PM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
Karl Marx was writing about "access to tools" (in different words) in the 1800s, with a notably much less individualistic bent than Stewart Brand. When seen form that perspective, Malcolm Harris' description of Brand as "born into an ownership-class family" reveals a potential reason for that difference.
Wasn't Marx also from an ownership-class family?
posted by clawsoon at 12:50 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wasn't Marx also from an ownership-class family?
posted by clawsoon at 12:50 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's a lot to be said about techno-utopianism and how we've diverged from it, much of the best of it comes from people who were themselves techno-utopians, but it seems slightly strange to think that Brand was really involved in where Silicon Valley has taken us.
Kevin Kelly for example, also a techno-utopian from that era (I think he still is) but takes a much less "technology is neutral" view in his later writing.
Californianism as a kind of ideology is a fascinating object of study and I'm sure that Brand should be understand as part of it, but he really seems more like someone who - indeed like Forrest Gump - was perpetually marginal. At everything but never at the centre of anything.
The particular Californian strand of early hacker culture is particularly interesting because the other substantial strand, the MIT/Boston one did very much believe that tools had an agenda of their own. The whole Free Software movement is based on the idea that if the underlying tools aren't free (in the sense of liberated, although also free of cost) then the consequence would be an unfree culture.
Before he knew it, Brand was on a Shell oil platform, helping the company’s managers find an innovative way to restructure the workforce, despite the labor union’s objections. In the second half of his life, Brand betrayed everything he’d ever embraced in the first half, with the notable exception of capitalism, of which he’s remained in favor.
I think this is a mis-reading of Brand because it misunderstands what he embraced in the first half. The whole point of the particular fusion of techno-optimism, social liberalism, and hippie post-political individualism that characterises that particular late 20th century "Californian" (it's not uniquely from there but it'll do as a term) ideology is that it was never incompatible with capitalism to begin with. Restructuring a work-force, but like, in a chilled non-confrontational way is not just exactly who he always was but also exactly what that entire ideology was always going to lead to.
The author notes that he never wrote a line of code and that the only technology company he was ever personally involved with was very early and ultimately did represent utopian ideals. Like so many utopian projects it ended up absorbed by a behemoth and effectively disappearing. Under those circumstances it's a little difficult to hold him accountable for something that was created by basically everyone around him while he drank cocktails.
posted by atrazine at 12:59 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Kevin Kelly for example, also a techno-utopian from that era (I think he still is) but takes a much less "technology is neutral" view in his later writing.
Californianism as a kind of ideology is a fascinating object of study and I'm sure that Brand should be understand as part of it, but he really seems more like someone who - indeed like Forrest Gump - was perpetually marginal. At everything but never at the centre of anything.
The particular Californian strand of early hacker culture is particularly interesting because the other substantial strand, the MIT/Boston one did very much believe that tools had an agenda of their own. The whole Free Software movement is based on the idea that if the underlying tools aren't free (in the sense of liberated, although also free of cost) then the consequence would be an unfree culture.
Before he knew it, Brand was on a Shell oil platform, helping the company’s managers find an innovative way to restructure the workforce, despite the labor union’s objections. In the second half of his life, Brand betrayed everything he’d ever embraced in the first half, with the notable exception of capitalism, of which he’s remained in favor.
I think this is a mis-reading of Brand because it misunderstands what he embraced in the first half. The whole point of the particular fusion of techno-optimism, social liberalism, and hippie post-political individualism that characterises that particular late 20th century "Californian" (it's not uniquely from there but it'll do as a term) ideology is that it was never incompatible with capitalism to begin with. Restructuring a work-force, but like, in a chilled non-confrontational way is not just exactly who he always was but also exactly what that entire ideology was always going to lead to.
The author notes that he never wrote a line of code and that the only technology company he was ever personally involved with was very early and ultimately did represent utopian ideals. Like so many utopian projects it ended up absorbed by a behemoth and effectively disappearing. Under those circumstances it's a little difficult to hold him accountable for something that was created by basically everyone around him while he drank cocktails.
posted by atrazine at 12:59 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I strongly endorse @JonJacky's response to @wesleyac. "You can draw a fairly straight line" between any two points in history that have any causal connection at all, if you're willing to ignore all the topography of the ground over which the lines run.
Try this on for size. Would you like to be living in the world where the WEC never happened, because the people who voted for Richard Nixon won an unconditional victory in the war against the dirty hippies?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:18 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Try this on for size. Would you like to be living in the world where the WEC never happened, because the people who voted for Richard Nixon won an unconditional victory in the war against the dirty hippies?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:18 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
There seem to be a number of people lining up to dismiss this as a hit piece, as if this somehow made the hits inaccurate or unnecessary. What strikes me is how Brand's story reads so very differently when those who haven't bought his schtick write it.
What else do you need to know about a man who habitually induced his Whole Earth Catalog coworkers to play a game with padded swords just so he, with his experience and size, could beat the crap out of them? Arrogant, lazy, pretentious, and mean: Between the lines, it sure sounds like this guy sucks. This admittedly uncharitable lens brings Whole Earth into sharper focus.
This review is exactly the lens that the book doesn't provide, and I very much enjoyed seeing An Icon Like Brand seen in the kind of iconoclastic light a real iconoclast would have wielded. A fantastic piece on someone whose legacy of intellectual damage - and direct role in breaking working rights and social projects - more than merits it.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 1:30 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
What else do you need to know about a man who habitually induced his Whole Earth Catalog coworkers to play a game with padded swords just so he, with his experience and size, could beat the crap out of them? Arrogant, lazy, pretentious, and mean: Between the lines, it sure sounds like this guy sucks. This admittedly uncharitable lens brings Whole Earth into sharper focus.
This review is exactly the lens that the book doesn't provide, and I very much enjoyed seeing An Icon Like Brand seen in the kind of iconoclastic light a real iconoclast would have wielded. A fantastic piece on someone whose legacy of intellectual damage - and direct role in breaking working rights and social projects - more than merits it.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 1:30 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't know what history's judgment is going to be on Brand. I'm willing to hear the opinions.
What makes me uncomfortable is the playing around with facts in the review.
The author says that Brand wanted "No politics, no religion, and no art." in the WEC. The implication being that this quote reflects the actual contents of the WEC.
Take a look at the Table of Contents for the Last Whole Earth Catalog. Art, p. 355, p.357. Politics p. 237. There's no entry for Religion but there's an entry for Mysticism. The section on Politics has reviews of the following among others: Rules for Radicals by Alinsky, The Organizer's Manual by the OM Collective; A Rap on Race by Margaret Meade and James Baldwin(!); The Black Reading List; the Handbook for Conscientious Objectors; a periodical called Win; and Motive, a radical magazine from the South.
Take a look at the Table of Contents of The Next Whole Earth Catalog. For Art there is a section called Craft - p.246-286 - forty pages of reviews about artmaking. Politics p.374-397, twenty pages of reviews of books, magazines and organizations. For Religion - Buddhism p.584-7, Mysticism p.588-90, Christianity p.591.
I'm afraid the author of the review has an axe to grind, and is willing to use it on the truth.
posted by storybored at 2:17 PM on July 6, 2022 [15 favorites]
What makes me uncomfortable is the playing around with facts in the review.
The author says that Brand wanted "No politics, no religion, and no art." in the WEC. The implication being that this quote reflects the actual contents of the WEC.
Take a look at the Table of Contents for the Last Whole Earth Catalog. Art, p. 355, p.357. Politics p. 237. There's no entry for Religion but there's an entry for Mysticism. The section on Politics has reviews of the following among others: Rules for Radicals by Alinsky, The Organizer's Manual by the OM Collective; A Rap on Race by Margaret Meade and James Baldwin(!); The Black Reading List; the Handbook for Conscientious Objectors; a periodical called Win; and Motive, a radical magazine from the South.
Take a look at the Table of Contents of The Next Whole Earth Catalog. For Art there is a section called Craft - p.246-286 - forty pages of reviews about artmaking. Politics p.374-397, twenty pages of reviews of books, magazines and organizations. For Religion - Buddhism p.584-7, Mysticism p.588-90, Christianity p.591.
I'm afraid the author of the review has an axe to grind, and is willing to use it on the truth.
posted by storybored at 2:17 PM on July 6, 2022 [15 favorites]
My first reaction to this is that going after these kinds of guys at this point kind of feels like shooting fish in a barrel. I found the piece entertaining but I don't think I know enough to know how fair it is.
When an Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard, are they more free for it? Who does that tool serve — the driver, or Uber?
I think there are several levels to/varieties of "building tools" tech-utopianism. The most authentic version, the version I associate with open source and related movements, certainly shows its limitations - at its best it has a real egalitarian spirit and really does offer tools that make people's (working) lives easier but it's still "just" tools. It doesn't offer any real challenge to power and so falls far short of changing the world, and in fact its projects are often either at the mercy of existing powerful institutions or otherwise neglected. Even the people who have really tried to make it political have been myopically focused on technical over social factors in a way that has put a ceiling on their impact.
But then there's also the version in which people are at best paying lip service to that ideal while building tools which firmly plant the handle in their own hand from the beginning. Nothing about Uber as a tool actually aspires or pretends to neutrality.
posted by atoxyl at 3:21 PM on July 6, 2022
When an Uber driver is being shuttled from place to place by the iPhone stuck to their dashboard, are they more free for it? Who does that tool serve — the driver, or Uber?
I think there are several levels to/varieties of "building tools" tech-utopianism. The most authentic version, the version I associate with open source and related movements, certainly shows its limitations - at its best it has a real egalitarian spirit and really does offer tools that make people's (working) lives easier but it's still "just" tools. It doesn't offer any real challenge to power and so falls far short of changing the world, and in fact its projects are often either at the mercy of existing powerful institutions or otherwise neglected. Even the people who have really tried to make it political have been myopically focused on technical over social factors in a way that has put a ceiling on their impact.
But then there's also the version in which people are at best paying lip service to that ideal while building tools which firmly plant the handle in their own hand from the beginning. Nothing about Uber as a tool actually aspires or pretends to neutrality.
posted by atoxyl at 3:21 PM on July 6, 2022
Take a look at the Table of Contents for the Last Whole Earth Catalog.
let's not forget the included hippie novel, "divine right's trip" which starts on page 9 and meanders here and there through out the text of the book - funny thing to include for an "art"less book
the catalog works as a summation of the counter culture in the early 70s - this is something that contains much of what was talked about in the alternative world - this is something that records what a left-leaning back to the land and alternative food/medicine movement was involved in before the conservative counterculture developed and started taking it over in the late 70s and 80s
people are giving some rather glib comments about this book (not you, storybored - like me, you seem to have a copy), but they really ought to look through it before they judge
posted by pyramid termite at 6:56 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
let's not forget the included hippie novel, "divine right's trip" which starts on page 9 and meanders here and there through out the text of the book - funny thing to include for an "art"less book
the catalog works as a summation of the counter culture in the early 70s - this is something that contains much of what was talked about in the alternative world - this is something that records what a left-leaning back to the land and alternative food/medicine movement was involved in before the conservative counterculture developed and started taking it over in the late 70s and 80s
people are giving some rather glib comments about this book (not you, storybored - like me, you seem to have a copy), but they really ought to look through it before they judge
posted by pyramid termite at 6:56 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
The most authentic version, the version I associate with open source and related movements, certainly shows its limitations - at its best it has a real egalitarian spirit and really does offer tools that make people's (working) lives easier but it's still "just" tools. It doesn't offer any real challenge to power and so falls far short of changing the world,
In 1989, someone whose name remains unknown brought a case full of modems to a university lounge in Prague. The rest is history. Tools can and do pose a challenge to power.
posted by ocschwar at 8:35 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
In 1989, someone whose name remains unknown brought a case full of modems to a university lounge in Prague. The rest is history. Tools can and do pose a challenge to power.
posted by ocschwar at 8:35 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
it is surprising to me to see so much defense of him (Brand) here,when his politics are quite fundamentally libertarian
What I have is a nostalgic fondness for the original Whole Earth Catalog,
which I found fascinating and exotic when I was in high school. It was
quite innovative in content and format. It has been so often imitated
it is easy to forget how original it was at the time. Whoever put it
together deserves credit for that, and also for getting it distributed so
widely that a high school kid could find it.
Libertarian? If you say so. I don't recall noticing that, but maybe I
overlooked it or forgot. Okay, let's have a look, for the first time in
many years. It's pretty much as I remember it. It recommends The Human
Use of Human Beings by Norbert Weiner. Also Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia.
Etc, etc. I'm still not seeing the libertarian stuff.
The WEC is now an artifact from another time. I remember finding it in
the bookstore near the other how-tos of the day: Diet for a Small Planet.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. Nomadic Furniture. Nearby: Trout Fishing in America etc. On the magazine rack: Ramparts, The Evergreen Review, Zap Comics. A vanished world.
I appreciate the desire to find the roots of our dystopian present in that
long-ago world. But I'm not seeing it in the WEC. It does foreshadow a
future --- but it's a future that never arrived. Where lots of little
communes and collectives thrive. If it had arrived, people might say
there was a line to it from the WEC.
posted by JonJacky at 8:53 PM on July 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
What I have is a nostalgic fondness for the original Whole Earth Catalog,
which I found fascinating and exotic when I was in high school. It was
quite innovative in content and format. It has been so often imitated
it is easy to forget how original it was at the time. Whoever put it
together deserves credit for that, and also for getting it distributed so
widely that a high school kid could find it.
Libertarian? If you say so. I don't recall noticing that, but maybe I
overlooked it or forgot. Okay, let's have a look, for the first time in
many years. It's pretty much as I remember it. It recommends The Human
Use of Human Beings by Norbert Weiner. Also Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia.
Etc, etc. I'm still not seeing the libertarian stuff.
The WEC is now an artifact from another time. I remember finding it in
the bookstore near the other how-tos of the day: Diet for a Small Planet.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. Nomadic Furniture. Nearby: Trout Fishing in America etc. On the magazine rack: Ramparts, The Evergreen Review, Zap Comics. A vanished world.
I appreciate the desire to find the roots of our dystopian present in that
long-ago world. But I'm not seeing it in the WEC. It does foreshadow a
future --- but it's a future that never arrived. Where lots of little
communes and collectives thrive. If it had arrived, people might say
there was a line to it from the WEC.
posted by JonJacky at 8:53 PM on July 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
This is a bad article dedicated to the proposition that, if a biography of a man is a bad book, it must be because the man is a bad man.
posted by Naberius at 11:05 PM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 11:05 PM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
There is a somewhat more well-researched and gentler version of the criticism I have of Brand and the WEC here, which I found while searching for more context on that Jay Bonner quote. It doesn't have the whole letter, which appeared in the January 1970 supplement, but it has much of it, and of Brand's response:
Jay Bonner writes:
As for the libertarianism, beyond things like having Ayn Rand in the catalog, the introduction, the most succinct statement of their values, is quite individualistic:
posted by wesleyac at 3:53 AM on July 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
Jay Bonner writes:
Sometimes I don't care about nothing, but right now I do. It sickens me to think that over 150,000 people are going to pick up the Whole Earth Catalog and thoughtlessly think it's great, like I did. The function of the catalog is to provide access of tools for and from the WHOLE Earth. Roughly 80% of the peoples of this Whole Earth are being sucked on by various capitalistic countries of this world. Yet for some reason the problems of these “third world” people are not even mentioned in the catalog. There are books and various publications written by educated and experienced writers on these problems and their solutions. I really don't think the title “Whole Earth” is quite adequate for the catalog at this point.Brand replies:
Stewart Brand, the man who originally created and conceived the idea of a Whole Earth Catalog and truck store, does not seem to share my feelings that these types of political books and various publications should be in the catalog. Once, while working with him on the catalog, I asked Mr. Brand if he would
not carry any of a various number of politically oriented underground newspapers. Upon reply he told me that three of the first restrictions he made for the catalog were no art, no religion, no politics. I would like to point out that, although Mr. Brand apparently does not think so, all of the three basic ground rules he set up for himself at the beginning and told me of little over three months ago, he has broken. To start with art . . . Then we move on to religion . . . Lastly we come along to items of political significance. In this we find quite a few.
Handbook for Conscientious Objectors
The Population Bomb
Population Evolution and Birth Control
Birth Control Handbook
Atlas Shrugged
The Wall St. Journal and any number of “future” books.
I can understand why Mr. Brand makes such a distinction between, for example the Handbook for Conscientious Objectors, and a good book on Marxian theory, it's because he's a capitalist. The inclusion of books on such subjects would hinder catalog sales, and after all it's not serving the people he's interested in, it's making money, and believe me he has plenty of it. Besides, it's against all his economic beliefs. Yes, Mr. Brand's personal feelings really show up in what should properly be called the “Stewart Brand Catalog”. From all the 128 pages of the Whole Earth Catalog there emerges an unmentioned political viewpoint. The whole feeling of escapism which the catalog conveys is to me unfortunate. . . . The idea of the catalog is a good one. The people need a Whole Earth Catalog, but not the one they're getting! If you feel at all the same, write Stewart Brand.
Jay worked with his brother Joe doing layout on the Fall Catalog and was not rehired for January production, because of too many technical mistakes on his pages. Jay is 17. (I'm 31. How old are you? It matters, more than any of us like.) Correct I have some money, thanks to parents, which I'm putting into work like the Catalog. My salary is $5/hr. The Catalog is non-profit, so our income . . . can only be spent on further educational projects. The capitalism question is interesting. I've yet to figure out what capitalism is, but if it's what we're doing, I dig it. Oppressed peoples: all I know is I've been radicalized by working on the Catalog into far more personal involvement with politics than I had as an artist. My background is WASP, wife is American Indian. Work I did a few years ago with Indians convinced me that any guilt-based action toward anyone (personal or institutional) can only make a situation worse. . . . I'm for power to the people and responsibility to the people. . . .If anyone has a copy of the Jan 1970 supplement lying around, I'd be curious to see Brand's response unabridged, but from what's in that paper "it sure sounds like this guy sucks" seems about right to me — starting off the response with the age old story of "oh the person with political complaints was fired because their work was sub-par, and not for any other reason" (which like, maybe, but I'm sure not taking the boss' word for it, nor do I see how it's relevant in the response other than as a distraction to try to discredit Jay Bonner), then talking about their difference in age. Like, what? He doesn't seem to offer any actual response to why some kinds of politics are allowed and others are not, just saying that capitalism seems good, and no one should feel guilty (which, uh, I don't think was ever brought up? Seems like quite a bit of projection)
As for the libertarianism, beyond things like having Ayn Rand in the catalog, the introduction, the most succinct statement of their values, is quite individualistic:
power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.For all the ideals about community floating around then, the WEC makes no mention of it — it is about individuals taking power into their own hands, not communities.
posted by wesleyac at 3:53 AM on July 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
starting off the response with the age old story of "oh the person with political complaints was fired because their work was sub-par, and not for any other reason" (which like, maybe, but I'm sure not taking the boss' word for it, nor do I see how it's relevant in the response other than as a distraction to try to discredit Jay Bonner)
I read it as "young person with a lot of ideas would rather spend time talking about those ideas than develop the skills necessary to put those ideas into action/concrete form." Which is not an unusual phenomenon in proggy circles/groups.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:31 AM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
I read it as "young person with a lot of ideas would rather spend time talking about those ideas than develop the skills necessary to put those ideas into action/concrete form." Which is not an unusual phenomenon in proggy circles/groups.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:31 AM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
If anyone has a copy of the Jan 1970 supplement lying around, I'd be curious to see Brand's response unabridged, but from what's in that paper "it sure sounds like this guy sucks" seems about right to me
The thing that surprises me is how similar he sounds to any number of dotcom CEO tweets. The indictment is on the industry for not having moved beyond that. I think that emulation, whether intentional or not, might say something significant.
posted by rhizome at 12:03 PM on July 7, 2022
The thing that surprises me is how similar he sounds to any number of dotcom CEO tweets. The indictment is on the industry for not having moved beyond that. I think that emulation, whether intentional or not, might say something significant.
posted by rhizome at 12:03 PM on July 7, 2022
Will go through this thread more fully later today. I am not going to read the piece itself.
I 'm a life-long Californian. I've read the book...This is how I read it.
The most telling quote is Ken Kesey saying, (paraphrased) "Brand always leans in the direction of power" It was a statement that made Brand very uncomfortable.
Brand is a complicated guy with some apparent long standing blindspots to his own privilege
This came through the book big time.
As for his capitalism, this was a major issue for his father when Brand jumped tracks and seeming went the "hippie" route. Brand often tried to convinced him otherwise. When he did start making money with some of his projects, this was the one of the first things he expressed to his father essentially saying that he never stopped being a capitalist.
I've read his book, Whole Earth Discipline. He lays out good arguments for being pro-geoengineering, nuclear, gmo's, etc. While I may not agree with him, his arguments are worth being taken under consideration. I actually send him an email expressing this. His response, to me, was both thankful and annoyingly curt.
He's not an emotional man
Another emphasis of the book of how his first wife fundamentally was the one who kept the
Whole Earth environment together. He only recently acknowledged this fact.
He also had financial support (namely family) through the 60's before he established himself on his own.
What does unnerve me about Brand is his association with literary agent John Brockman and Brockman's later association with Michael Epstein. Brockman's "Edge" group is quietly annoying. There does seem to be a privileged boy's club feel to all of it.
A good counterbalance in the book is with actor Peter Coyote. Both came from privilege. While Brand came from 3-4 wasp generational wealth, Coyote came from first generation Jewish wealth. Brand seemed to skirt along the edges of the Bay Area scene (Known as a Merry Prankster with actually being one), Coyote went all in (note his work with the Diggers) While initially friends in the 60's, over time the two diverged with Coyote slowly becoming fed-up with Brands positioning. The book actually ends with a confrontation between the two.
Full disclosure. I had a dream with Brand once. We were dancing the tango together. He led.
posted by goalyeehah at 12:34 PM on July 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I 'm a life-long Californian. I've read the book...This is how I read it.
The most telling quote is Ken Kesey saying, (paraphrased) "Brand always leans in the direction of power" It was a statement that made Brand very uncomfortable.
Brand is a complicated guy with some apparent long standing blindspots to his own privilege
This came through the book big time.
As for his capitalism, this was a major issue for his father when Brand jumped tracks and seeming went the "hippie" route. Brand often tried to convinced him otherwise. When he did start making money with some of his projects, this was the one of the first things he expressed to his father essentially saying that he never stopped being a capitalist.
I've read his book, Whole Earth Discipline. He lays out good arguments for being pro-geoengineering, nuclear, gmo's, etc. While I may not agree with him, his arguments are worth being taken under consideration. I actually send him an email expressing this. His response, to me, was both thankful and annoyingly curt.
He's not an emotional man
Another emphasis of the book of how his first wife fundamentally was the one who kept the
Whole Earth environment together. He only recently acknowledged this fact.
He also had financial support (namely family) through the 60's before he established himself on his own.
What does unnerve me about Brand is his association with literary agent John Brockman and Brockman's later association with Michael Epstein. Brockman's "Edge" group is quietly annoying. There does seem to be a privileged boy's club feel to all of it.
A good counterbalance in the book is with actor Peter Coyote. Both came from privilege. While Brand came from 3-4 wasp generational wealth, Coyote came from first generation Jewish wealth. Brand seemed to skirt along the edges of the Bay Area scene (Known as a Merry Prankster with actually being one), Coyote went all in (note his work with the Diggers) While initially friends in the 60's, over time the two diverged with Coyote slowly becoming fed-up with Brands positioning. The book actually ends with a confrontation between the two.
Full disclosure. I had a dream with Brand once. We were dancing the tango together. He led.
posted by goalyeehah at 12:34 PM on July 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
Not to belabor this, but I did want to confirm that my memories of the WEC were accurate. I am looking at the Fall 1968 edition found at the archive.org link in gwint's post above. This looks like the same version I had all those years ago.
As for the libertarianism, beyond things like having Ayn Rand in the catalog ...
Ayn Rand is not in this edition of the catalog, nor could I find any other libertarian manifestoes.
the introduction, the most succinct statement of their values, is quite individualistic...
Encouragement of a do-it-yourself attitude is often found in how-to books. I didn't interpret this as advocacy for a Libertarian political philosophy.
For all the ideals about community floating around then, the WEC makes no mention of it ...
There is a section of this catalog titled Community. It begins with an entry for a magazine called The Modern Utopian about intential communities. The next entry
is for a book called Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia. Then a book Groups Under Stress about scientific teams working in confined quarters. Then several more pages, includng the science fiction novel Dune - for 95 cents!
Entries in other sections are also pertinent. For example Shelter and Land Use has a book by VITA, Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, called
Village Technology Handbook, which WEC says 'is ideal for rural intentional communities'. Other entries on tipis, domes etc. imply that groups not just individuals would be involved.
Thanks for providing the impetus to revisit this interesting old book and revive some memories.
posted by JonJacky at 1:12 PM on July 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
As for the libertarianism, beyond things like having Ayn Rand in the catalog ...
Ayn Rand is not in this edition of the catalog, nor could I find any other libertarian manifestoes.
the introduction, the most succinct statement of their values, is quite individualistic...
Encouragement of a do-it-yourself attitude is often found in how-to books. I didn't interpret this as advocacy for a Libertarian political philosophy.
For all the ideals about community floating around then, the WEC makes no mention of it ...
There is a section of this catalog titled Community. It begins with an entry for a magazine called The Modern Utopian about intential communities. The next entry
is for a book called Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia. Then a book Groups Under Stress about scientific teams working in confined quarters. Then several more pages, includng the science fiction novel Dune - for 95 cents!
Entries in other sections are also pertinent. For example Shelter and Land Use has a book by VITA, Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, called
Village Technology Handbook, which WEC says 'is ideal for rural intentional communities'. Other entries on tipis, domes etc. imply that groups not just individuals would be involved.
Thanks for providing the impetus to revisit this interesting old book and revive some memories.
posted by JonJacky at 1:12 PM on July 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
Hmm — I wonder how much the catalog changed over the years. Apparently Atlas Shrugged was added later on — while searching for that I found Reason, a explicitly libertarian magazine, celebrating the WEC. Here's what they have to say:
posted by wesleyac at 1:54 PM on July 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
As Catalog founder Stewart Brand told Reason's Brian Doherty in 2010: "This was in an era when JFK was saying, 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.' We were saying, 'Ask not what your country can do for you; do it yourself!'"But, I'm sure actual libertarians embracing it has nothing to do with the political ideology it expresses :)
...
Brand's own comments on Paul Ehrlich's now-discredited The Population Bomb (he calls it "the best first hard look" at the supposedly inevitable overpopulation crisis) bump up against his recommendation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged ("This preposterous novel has some unusual gold in it") and give a sense of the breadth of the worldviews represented. There's info on all the manuals and machines the aspiring communard could ever want, whether to purify water, make Bulgarian-style (?!?) yogurt, or give birth at home in the same log cabin you and your old man built yourselves. Books and pamphlets about how to not get arrested at rock festivals and political demonstrations are featured; so is Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, which is reviewed positively alongside Angus Black's A New Radical's Guide to Economic Reality, which called for a 20 percent flat tax and whose "plea is clear: less government today, even less tomorrow." Also on sale: the complete works of Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan, the influential popularizer of geodesic domes and whiz-bang futurism and the media theorist who in many ways prophesied the internet. "Understanding Whole Systems" was a full-blown category in the catalog—betraying Brand's education as a biologist trained in the late '50s, when researchers were first thinking about concepts like feedback loops and integrated analysis—alongside such sections as "Land Use," "Community," and "Nomadics."
...
Yet looking back, the Whole Earth Catalog's critique of "remotely done power and glory" and Reason's vision of empowering the individual through reality-based, rational analysis ("logic, not legends") are part of the same DIY spirit that energized the best elements of 1960s counterculture. And a certain optimism about the future underwrote both publications. We are as gods—demigods, maybe—and 50 years on, we're still trying to get better at it.
Encouragement of a do-it-yourself attitude is often found in how-to books. I didn't interpret this as advocacy for a Libertarian political philosophy.As someone who appreciates the DIY ethos a lot, I do think it's worth being critical about the ways that DIY can discourage collectivism and regulation. It's easy to go from "oh, it's neat that I can provide this for myself" to "Ask not what your country can do for you; do it yourself!" Personally, I think people shouldn't have to DIY things like childbirth and healthcare! I think it's good for people to learn those skills (I've been personally thinking a lot about doing EMT training, as the possibility of governmental collapse draws nearer), but really I'd love most to have a government functional enough that I don't feel like I have to DIY stuff like that.
posted by wesleyac at 1:54 PM on July 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
What else do you need to know about a man who habitually induced his Whole Earth Catalog coworkers to play a game with padded swords just so he, with his experience and size, could beat the crap out of them? Arrogant, lazy, pretentious, and mean: Between the lines, it sure sounds like this guy sucks. This admittedly uncharitable lens brings Whole Earth into sharper focus.
Wow! This is serious projection on the writers part....
This game was picked up from a First Nation tribe he documented in the early 60's. A game that teenage boys and girls together played with each other. The major point was that it was strong, physical play played between both sexes. The principle is similar to improv games....a game that quickly bonds, relieves stress, opens communication, and establishes intimacy. Games like this were as common in the early Seventies as playing Frisbee.
This guy makes it sound like an episode of "The Office"
posted by goalyeehah at 2:27 PM on July 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Wow! This is serious projection on the writers part....
This game was picked up from a First Nation tribe he documented in the early 60's. A game that teenage boys and girls together played with each other. The major point was that it was strong, physical play played between both sexes. The principle is similar to improv games....a game that quickly bonds, relieves stress, opens communication, and establishes intimacy. Games like this were as common in the early Seventies as playing Frisbee.
This guy makes it sound like an episode of "The Office"
posted by goalyeehah at 2:27 PM on July 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
As for WEC, coming from a farm, it's a book that farmers would love. (In essence, he was directing it to the "back to the landers" of the time) If you don't have DIY ethic, you're not going to survive. A libertarian strain is built into the work. For good and ill.
Harris seems to give Brand to much credit for the things he is vilified for...
posted by goalyeehah at 2:44 PM on July 7, 2022
Harris seems to give Brand to much credit for the things he is vilified for...
posted by goalyeehah at 2:44 PM on July 7, 2022
But, I'm sure actual libertarians embracing it has nothing to do with the political ideology it expresses :)
Heh, I'm the opposite of a libertarian and I love the book. I think there might be a bit of correlation/causation confusion here. Think of the thousands of people who read the book and did not become a rapacioius CEO :)
I should be specific and say my favorite is the magnum opus: The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1980) which was also the most popular. Many of the book and company reviews are now obsolete but like JonJacky said, it still makes for fascinating reading today. The stuff that is not obsolete is essential. Books like The Joy of Cooking, A Pattern Language, The Character of Physical Law and quite a few others.
I checked the index for Ayn Rand, she's not in there. (Would have been sad if she was!) Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" is, but the pull quote is: "..a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges." A argument that today would be used in favor of carbon taxes.
If you were to hand this book to a neutral reader, and ask them to infer the politics of the editor, I don't think you'd get 'libertarian' as the answer. Politics isn't the main focus, not by a long shot. You got reviews for books on beekeeping, magazines on needlework, fitness how-tos. The whole gamut. It's perhaps best described as a visual (curated) AskMe, it is profound and practical but also playful. (At the bottom of each right-hand page is a little line drawing, and if you flip the pages it's an animation of San Francisco, the sun rises and falls, birds fly. How can you not love it!)
Oh and yes, the essays. My favorite is about the Oak Beams of New College, Oxford recounted by Gregory Bateson.
"New College Oxford is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded around the late 16th century. It has like other colleges a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top, yes? These might be eighteen inches square, twenty feet long. Some five to ten years ago, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall and poked at the beams and found they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays?
One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some worthy oaks on the College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country which are run by a college Forester. They called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him if there were any oaks for possible use.
He pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”
Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”
A nice story. That's the way to run a culture."
posted by storybored at 8:02 PM on July 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Heh, I'm the opposite of a libertarian and I love the book. I think there might be a bit of correlation/causation confusion here. Think of the thousands of people who read the book and did not become a rapacioius CEO :)
I should be specific and say my favorite is the magnum opus: The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1980) which was also the most popular. Many of the book and company reviews are now obsolete but like JonJacky said, it still makes for fascinating reading today. The stuff that is not obsolete is essential. Books like The Joy of Cooking, A Pattern Language, The Character of Physical Law and quite a few others.
I checked the index for Ayn Rand, she's not in there. (Would have been sad if she was!) Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" is, but the pull quote is: "..a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges." A argument that today would be used in favor of carbon taxes.
If you were to hand this book to a neutral reader, and ask them to infer the politics of the editor, I don't think you'd get 'libertarian' as the answer. Politics isn't the main focus, not by a long shot. You got reviews for books on beekeeping, magazines on needlework, fitness how-tos. The whole gamut. It's perhaps best described as a visual (curated) AskMe, it is profound and practical but also playful. (At the bottom of each right-hand page is a little line drawing, and if you flip the pages it's an animation of San Francisco, the sun rises and falls, birds fly. How can you not love it!)
Oh and yes, the essays. My favorite is about the Oak Beams of New College, Oxford recounted by Gregory Bateson.
"New College Oxford is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded around the late 16th century. It has like other colleges a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top, yes? These might be eighteen inches square, twenty feet long. Some five to ten years ago, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall and poked at the beams and found they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays?
One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some worthy oaks on the College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country which are run by a college Forester. They called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him if there were any oaks for possible use.
He pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”
Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”
A nice story. That's the way to run a culture."
posted by storybored at 8:02 PM on July 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Looks to me like the Cold War context here is completely forgotten. If you were a young person in the US in 1971, you were confronted with a dichotomy: ally yourself with your country's Cold War efforts, as defined by the political consensus and the Military Industrial Complex, with all the political and moral compromises entailed in it. Or take the other side.
If you wanted to step outside that false dichotomy, AND exert any successful influence over your world, you were on your own. You had to start with your own self and the resources available to your individual self, and build up from there by recruiting like minded individuals.
It wasn't the first time. 140 years before it was the false dichotomy between allowing the European empires to take over larger chunks of North America, or pushing the Republic to its "manifest destiny." And it was Thoreau and company who advocated for stepping out, with the same means.
I see no libertarianism in any of this.
posted by ocschwar at 8:49 AM on July 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you wanted to step outside that false dichotomy, AND exert any successful influence over your world, you were on your own. You had to start with your own self and the resources available to your individual self, and build up from there by recruiting like minded individuals.
It wasn't the first time. 140 years before it was the false dichotomy between allowing the European empires to take over larger chunks of North America, or pushing the Republic to its "manifest destiny." And it was Thoreau and company who advocated for stepping out, with the same means.
I see no libertarianism in any of this.
posted by ocschwar at 8:49 AM on July 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
There’s more than one "outside" of any mainstream, and individuals rich in resources can use strategies that don’t rely on or help anyone else much. That’s the fall-line from Californian counterculture to Californian Ideology.
California near any water is such a rich environment that some of the animal species are evolutionary examples of maximal individualism in their genus.
posted by clew at 10:45 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
California near any water is such a rich environment that some of the animal species are evolutionary examples of maximal individualism in their genus.
posted by clew at 10:45 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
One more explanation of why it seems we are "defending Brand" -- actually what we are defending is the original WEC. Several comments here attest that some of us remember it vividly after more than fifty years. Why does the old WEC have such a strong sentimental, nostalgic grip on us?
I am especially motivated to provide an explanation now that I have finally read all of Malcolm Harris' critical piece in The Nation. He really doesn't like the WEC. "It's just shopping!" He doesn't even like cover price!
I don't know how old Harris is, but I suspect he cannot appreciate how startling and innovative the original WEC was when it appeared. There was really nothing like it -- it was a sampler of views into worlds that a suburban high school kid had no inkling of. And, the then-unique format invited frequent browsing and re-reading. Whoever put this together was an innovator who was really onto something. Harris clearly doesn't see this at all. He completely misunderstands it. Shopping? Nobody ever considered buying the stuff described in the WEC.
I've also noticed similar reactions of younger people to other pop-culture artifacts that are meaningful to people my age -- boomers. Younger generations did not experience the blandness and homogeneity of mainstream culture in the 1950s and early 1960s, as it was experienced then by white suburban kids. Starting in the late 1950s, shocks started coming --- where you felt Wow! What's that!? I've never seen/heard/thought anything like that before!. For me, the first of these I can remember is Elvis and Hound Dog when I was in kindergarten -- after Patty Page and Perry Como, it sounded like it was coming from another galaxy. Then The Catcher In the Rye in eighth grade -- can you actually put stuff like that in a book!? Then the Beatles in junior high, then again the Beatles with Sergeant Pepper in high school. Then a bit later the Whole Earth Catalog --- they call it a catalog, but is this some kind of book or what? This is not even to mention the simultaneous huge political upheavals around civil rights and the Vietnam War, which were also very startling and unexpected to us, and which made the simultaneously occuring pop culture especially vivid and memorable, even when it was not directly related.
Perhaps younger generations cannot fully appreciate how innovative all of these seemed at the time when they first appeared, because those artifacts and their imitators and successors have become so pervasive since then, to the point where they are now seen as banal cliches. It is no longer possible to experience the impact they originally had.
posted by JonJacky at 10:45 AM on July 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
I am especially motivated to provide an explanation now that I have finally read all of Malcolm Harris' critical piece in The Nation. He really doesn't like the WEC. "It's just shopping!" He doesn't even like cover price!
I don't know how old Harris is, but I suspect he cannot appreciate how startling and innovative the original WEC was when it appeared. There was really nothing like it -- it was a sampler of views into worlds that a suburban high school kid had no inkling of. And, the then-unique format invited frequent browsing and re-reading. Whoever put this together was an innovator who was really onto something. Harris clearly doesn't see this at all. He completely misunderstands it. Shopping? Nobody ever considered buying the stuff described in the WEC.
I've also noticed similar reactions of younger people to other pop-culture artifacts that are meaningful to people my age -- boomers. Younger generations did not experience the blandness and homogeneity of mainstream culture in the 1950s and early 1960s, as it was experienced then by white suburban kids. Starting in the late 1950s, shocks started coming --- where you felt Wow! What's that!? I've never seen/heard/thought anything like that before!. For me, the first of these I can remember is Elvis and Hound Dog when I was in kindergarten -- after Patty Page and Perry Como, it sounded like it was coming from another galaxy. Then The Catcher In the Rye in eighth grade -- can you actually put stuff like that in a book!? Then the Beatles in junior high, then again the Beatles with Sergeant Pepper in high school. Then a bit later the Whole Earth Catalog --- they call it a catalog, but is this some kind of book or what? This is not even to mention the simultaneous huge political upheavals around civil rights and the Vietnam War, which were also very startling and unexpected to us, and which made the simultaneously occuring pop culture especially vivid and memorable, even when it was not directly related.
Perhaps younger generations cannot fully appreciate how innovative all of these seemed at the time when they first appeared, because those artifacts and their imitators and successors have become so pervasive since then, to the point where they are now seen as banal cliches. It is no longer possible to experience the impact they originally had.
posted by JonJacky at 10:45 AM on July 8, 2022 [10 favorites]
But - just as alternative, very close in time, and from the poor side of the country not the rich one: the Foxfire books. The WEC wasn’t the only alternative and that makes its choices ideological past "not the mainstream".
posted by clew at 11:01 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 11:01 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was wondering about the Foxfire books in comparison to the Whole Earth Catalog. I think the Foxfire books are all online at archive.org, here's the first. The first Foxfire was published in 1972, a year after the WEC, but the Foxfire Magazine dates back to 1966. And of course it has precedents in old country journals and the Farmer's Almanac and the like.
But Foxfire is pretty limited country living: the first book is about processing a hog and canning fruit and making your own log cabin. Cool stuff and tied to the back-to-the-land ethos of that era. The first WEC is much more cosmopolitan, highlighting ideas and products from around the world and across tech levels. I think that global, tech-friendly worldview is one of the things that distinguishes it.
While I'm here I want to shoutout to High Weirdness by Mail, the 1988 guide to mail order strange culture. Also RFD / Radical Faerie Digest which was kinda like Foxfire for queer people.
posted by Nelson at 11:29 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
But Foxfire is pretty limited country living: the first book is about processing a hog and canning fruit and making your own log cabin. Cool stuff and tied to the back-to-the-land ethos of that era. The first WEC is much more cosmopolitan, highlighting ideas and products from around the world and across tech levels. I think that global, tech-friendly worldview is one of the things that distinguishes it.
While I'm here I want to shoutout to High Weirdness by Mail, the 1988 guide to mail order strange culture. Also RFD / Radical Faerie Digest which was kinda like Foxfire for queer people.
posted by Nelson at 11:29 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
Another bit about Brand and his "libertarianism"
Brand recognizes that from his stint as assistant to Jerry Brown during Brown's first term in his first stint as guv of California, he came to realize the role of government can have in doing good works.
As an aside, Brown's first go-around deserves a book in itself....
As governor, Brown held a strong interest in environmental issues. He appointed J. Baldwin to work in the newly created California Office of Appropriate Technology, Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, Stewart Brand as Special Advisor, John Bryson as chairman of the California State Water Board. Brown also reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent and appointing artists to the council,[13] and appointed more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor - Wikipedia
One of the appointees to the Arts Council was actor Peter Coyote. Hardcore conservatives vilified Brown for appointing an ex-heroin addict
Chicago columnist Mike Royko early on dissed him as "Governor Moonbeam" and later apologized for it
posted by goalyeehah at 11:43 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Brand recognizes that from his stint as assistant to Jerry Brown during Brown's first term in his first stint as guv of California, he came to realize the role of government can have in doing good works.
As an aside, Brown's first go-around deserves a book in itself....
As governor, Brown held a strong interest in environmental issues. He appointed J. Baldwin to work in the newly created California Office of Appropriate Technology, Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, Stewart Brand as Special Advisor, John Bryson as chairman of the California State Water Board. Brown also reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent and appointing artists to the council,[13] and appointed more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor - Wikipedia
One of the appointees to the Arts Council was actor Peter Coyote. Hardcore conservatives vilified Brown for appointing an ex-heroin addict
Chicago columnist Mike Royko early on dissed him as "Governor Moonbeam" and later apologized for it
posted by goalyeehah at 11:43 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Regarding Brand and libertarianism, here he is in 2018:
Brand now describes himself as “post-libertarian,” a shift he attributes to a brief stint working with Jerry Brown, during his first term as California’s governor, in the nineteen-seventies, and to books like Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” which describes the Trump Administration’s damage to vital federal agencies. “ ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ was very libertarian, but that’s because it was about people in their twenties, and everybody then was reading Robert Heinlein and asserting themselves and all that stuff,” Brand said. “We didn’t know what government did."And here he is discussing Ronald Reagan in 1981, years *after* his stint with Jerry Brown:
Brand looks with decided relish on the next four years of Ronald Reagan.posted by Lyme Drop at 2:46 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
"We small businessmen will get a change if Reagan lives up to his promise and stays off our backs," he says. "American institutions have grown fat and lazy."
I was wondering about the Foxfire books in comparison to the Whole Earth Catalog.
i always thought the foxfire books were meant as a record of old time culture before it went away, not just a how-to collection of articles
also we're overlooking the elephant in the room - the mother earth news - which went from eco-hippie-dom to survivalist tract in a few years, tempered by a good deal of practical information, of course - when i saw young republican types carrying them around in the late 70s, i knew things were changing
posted by pyramid termite at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
i always thought the foxfire books were meant as a record of old time culture before it went away, not just a how-to collection of articles
also we're overlooking the elephant in the room - the mother earth news - which went from eco-hippie-dom to survivalist tract in a few years, tempered by a good deal of practical information, of course - when i saw young republican types carrying them around in the late 70s, i knew things were changing
posted by pyramid termite at 3:09 PM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Coincidentally, I just began reading Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. On pages 56 - 57 she depicts her fascination with the Whole Earth Catalog her father brought home in 1971. It's another example of the kind of response I tried to describe upthread.
posted by JonJacky at 8:24 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JonJacky at 8:24 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for that JonJacky, I'll have to check that out.
posted by storybored at 11:47 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by storybored at 11:47 AM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Also going to object to his first paragraph "Nor is he much of a writer or editor". He's got seven books as author and a bunch of editing credits too. The one I've read is How Buildings Learn which to my mind was a very interesting and orthogonal take on architecture. It was a fairly successful book and while I'm sure someone has some critiques of it somewhere, but you can't just dismiss it entirely.
Has anyone read Markoff's biography that this is ostensibly a review of? I assume the book is mostly kind about Brand and the ugliness here all comes from Harris. The NYT review gives the impression Markoff's book itself is generous with its subject. It also suggests that Markoff's book could have done with more skepticism or criticism of Brand's works.
posted by Nelson at 6:14 AM on July 6, 2022 [18 favorites]