I love the Whole Earth Catalog. That era of techno-utopian optimism is so exciting. I'm too young to have experienced more then the tail end of it in the 90s going to computer camp as a kid, but it felt like anything was possible and everything was connected.

It is a bit sad to see where we have landed after all that.

Apparently ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-importance-of-Christopher-... ) one of the things that originally got computer scientists interested in Christopher Alexander was the original Whole Earth Catalog promoting his Notes on the Synthesis of Form.

Project like this make me stop and truly appreciate the time someone took to make this... and make me wish I had more time in my day to consume this beauty in its entirety. So much knowledge retained here.

I recall seeing the catalog around. My (hippie) mom must have had a copy.

I was only a kid growing up in the 70's but it definitely brings back memories of that time of optimism. There was a lot of experimentation and a willingness to try new ideas in all aspects of society. Besides the experimental education that I recall brushes with, you had Buckminster Fuller and his dome-home ideas, the U.S. space program…

To be sure things weren't all Pet Rocks and Lava lamps but there sure did seem to be a lot more joy and fun in the world then.

What I do these days for "comfort time" is to pull down things like these (and old magazines) in PDF form and browse them off-line.

You can use whatever viewer you like of course, but I ended up building a crude but dedicated device (based around Raspberry Pi and a small Python app) that is just for PDF-magazine browsing. Bookmarking, a progress indicator per title so you know which magazines you've read, which one you are still working through.

I have easily a terra-byte of magazines to still work through. As I implied though, I go back to it when I just want to decompress and shut out the present-day for a while.

(I'm pulling all these Whole Earth Catalogs down now.)

Jobs called it "Google in paperback form" [1].

I wonder what obscure (probably online?) source of information of today we'll be comparing to the mainstream sources of tomorrow.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/09/steve-job...

This is pretty COOL! Right up my alley. I have been working on a similar project with PUNK ZINES. I have a lil loop going with Internet Archive - Scraped all of their zines and any new submissions I upload to them. Yours is much prettier than mine. NICE NICE job. Bookmark.

This is great! I remember a turning point for me when I was feeling very low at the height of the War on Terror and jingoism appeared to have taken over the world. Just before the housing bubble popped and politics would swing the other way, but we didn't know that was going to happen yet.

John Mayer was playing music at Macworld 2007 (wish I could find the video) and said "Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. just make life more fun. It's like the opposite of terrorism":

https://www.cnet.com/culture/live-macworld-coverage/

I think of stuff like the Whole Earth Catalog as the opposite of neofeudalism and tech bro culture's revisionist history.

It doesn't have to be this way. Wealth inequality isn't invincible, or even inevitable. Back to basics works. We can get our hacker culture back. We can restore the timeline that's been stolen from us, the one we were on in the 90s before financialization and ensh@ttification ruined all the fun.

Seeing this on the front page again prompted me to dig into some of the Whole Earth Catalog successor publications for the first time.

I came across an article in Whole Earth Software Review, where many participants on a forum discuss the emerging technology of word processors — particularly interesting given the rise of LLMs as a new tool for "writing".

https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-software-review-no-1-s...

A few quotes:

> LEVY: I readily admit that using my Apple and Wordstar has changed me considerably. I do stories faster, write them more organically and have time to play more. I play on my computer a lot. Word processing, even in our current brain-damaged technological state, is something that significantly improves lives.

> SPEZZANO: … You could thoroughly try out five cars in one day, but it would take a month to really test out five word processors.

> SPEZZANO: … I think the overall plan should be to work towards a software aesthetic, a capacity on the part of the reader to appreciate a good program. Most of us don't have this because a computer program is a new medium. Like the appreciation of art or music or literature, software appreciation may not lead to one perfect word processor but an increased ability to see the subtleties of the medium, and to be articulate about what you think and don't like.

> ICENOGLE: … Transparency isn't a property of the program. It concerns the relationship of the user to the program. If you don't have to think about it, it's transparent.

> LISWOOD: Some day I will be able to talk at the screen, and then I can really screw things up in a hurry.

> McWILLIAMS: I have noticed my handwriting has deteriorated significantly ever since my word processor arrived. Is this happening to anyone else?

> NAIMAN: … Yes, my handwriting has gotten much worse since I've been using a word processor. And I find I can hardly ever write a short note, even just a line or two, without scratching something out and rewording it.

The list of "Fifteen Word Processor Commandments" at the end of the article is also a fun read. And right after that:

> The typewriter is a tool that extends human capabilities. It lets the dysgraphic writer read his own writing and allows him to share it with others. The word processing computer goes further. It separates writing (modeling ideas with words) from printing. This is why this tool is so important to me. Since the writing first exists only electronically, one can word and rework it for as long as necessary — moving things around, correcting spelling, transpositions and typos — before it gets printed.

> It's unfortunate that there's been so much hype and lack of imagination an insight about all of the wonderful things computers can do for us. Given this, it was hard for me to visualize a personal use for a computer until I found out about word processing.

I'm not familiar with the publication, so I was imagining a joke website that purports to index every object on the Earth.

Amusingly, my first intro to the Whole Earth Catalog was the cocktail menu at Trick dog in 2019[0], which is very clearly a reference to the Fall 1970 issue.

[0]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/file/484/6/4846-Whole%20Dog%20Ca...

I clicked on the link ready to invest in this ETF but was disappointed