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Whole Earth online!

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JennyB:
Those of us of a certain age will remember the Whole Earth Catalog and it's subsequent sister publications. This was where my interest in computers and alternate technology started, back in my student days in the 1970's  :-*

Now they're all online!  :Thmbsup:

For those who are too young to remember, I'll let Kevin Kelly explain:

The Whole Earth Catalogs preached the hacker/designer approach to life starting in 1968, decades before this lifehacking became the norm. The Catalogs were a paper-based database offering thousands of hacks, tips, tools, suggestions, and possibilities for optimizing your life.

Like fine wine, the back issues of the Whole Earth Catalogs and its offspring, the CoEvolution Quarterly improve with age. One can read 20-year-old back issues and they will inform and astound you. They feel as if they were written yesterday. I've noted previously that much of their charm comes because they were blogs created in newsprint, written before the internet.

One could read back issues if you could find them. I had the privilege of producing many of the issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and some of the Catalogs, so I had my own personal library of them. (Therefore you should also discount my enthusiasm for them.) I can't tell you how many wonderful evenings I have spent sitting in my reading chair re-exploring the fantastic worlds captured in these back issues. It is impossible to pick one up and not be mesmerized, thrilled, amazed, and informed by at least two stories or reviews. There is a timeless nature to this work that is due to their anti-fashionable status. The Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolutions were idea-based journalism, rather than event-based. Instead of reporting on top of things, they liked to get to the bottom of things.  These issues zagged while the rest of the culture zigged, only to zag later.

The good news is that all this goodness is now online. Danica Remy and the last holdouts of the old Point Foundation, publishers of the Catalogs and magazine until its last issue in 2002, have given a second life to this gold mine of material by arranging them to be scanned and posted online. The entire 35-year archive of Whole Earth Catalogs, Supplements, Reviews and CoEvolutions are all up and ready to be studied. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee.  Go here.

I am not thrilled by the interface or format. The pages are clunky to navigate and worse, the proprietary format goes against the essential open system that Whole Earth both preached and practiced. The scans are analog. I could not find anyway to copy and paste text from them. The pages would have been far more useful and easier to use and share as plain old PDF docs.

But, oh! The richness!  There are some very are early Whole Earth Catalog Supplements that in all my time at Whole Earth I never saw or read. They are here online now. For those unfamiliar with the wisdom of the Catalog, this archive will serve as a wonderful start. There are more than 100 issues of CoEvolution Quarterly (later called Whole Earth Review) and dozens of Whole Earth Catalogs to keep you up for years.
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cranioscopical:
Thanks for the link!

40hz:
It's great to see WEC finally up on the web. Especially since I'm "of the generation" so to speak.

I remember reading this in their Whole Software Catalog sister publication:

One arena where personal computer users suffer from functional fixedness on a large scale involves the informational-control software commonly referred to as "database management systems." These software packages are the most underutilized tools in the computer world. They originated for such problems as inventory control in shoe stores and reservation books for airUnes. It's fine that computers have improved those record-keeping functions, but consider what mental inventory you could control. Could you use perfect retrieval of every idea you ever had and the ability to cross-index those ideas according to the project you have underway? Would musicians, poets, monks, or playwrights like a perfect catalog of every inspiration that fired their brains? Would students, teachers, or speakers like an index of every publication they might reference in the future? Would mechanics, farmers, or contractors like a perfect memory for every oddball problem they ever solved, and for how that solution might work on similar problems? These functions can presently be performed by harmonizing a human mind with a database management system.

Those who value the information in their own minds can benefit from extending their memories and retrieval abilities with a computer. First you select a worthy and affordable database package that will perform the filing, searching, updating, cross-indexing, and reporting you require. Second, the more difficult step, you must change your habits. You must discipline yourself to scribble down or tape record the ideas you want to catalog as they occur. This habit change is critical, because important details of information are lost from human memory in a very short time. Stick these slips of paper or tapes near your microcomputer. Last, once a week or month, discipline yourself to sit down with your database program and expand the files of your mind. You can name your inspiration file EUREKA and your future projects MANANA. In just a few months you will build up a catalog of inspirations, insights, and fertile references that you could never buy off any computer store's shelf.

If you use the product of your mind in any valued way, then there may be no more valuable tool in your life than a good database management system keeping an ever-expanding, never-forgetting, totally cross-indexed catalog of your mind. Your personal computer can serve this mind-extension role and still balance your books, explore your income tax options, and (ho-hum)
type another letter.
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That's what first got me "into" computers - and ultimately pointed to a lifestyle and career path I've followed ever since. 8)

iphigenie:
Oh, that is a great find

Rereading thinking from 30/40 years ago always puts things in perspective, we dont seem to learn and listen much as a species, since some of the issues and warnings are still the same as today.

Also you notice how many modern day "thinkers" just recycle stuff pretending it is their own thinking, and on most topics we just don't know enough to figure it out.

40hz:
Seeing WEC got me to thinking: Whatever happened to Project Xanadu?

To my surprise it's still around and can be found here:

http://www.xanadu.com/

Talk about a "blast from the past."  ;D

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