Here’s a video made for the occasion. I was the shelter editor for several incarnations of the Catalog, including The Whole Earth Epilog.
“Meet the creators of the Whole Earth Catalog and the community they inspired. This video history of the Whole Earth culture covers 50 years of collective innovation in just 38 minutes.
“Whole Earth Flashbacks” takes you on a dazzling journey through time, from the first Whole Earth Catalogs to the Co-Evolution Quarterly, the Whole Earth Review, the Hackers Conference, the Well, Cyberthon, Wired, Burning Man and the 10,000 Year Clock, to name but a few.
These projects have one thing in common: they gave access to tools and ideas to help people bring their dreams to life — and change the world together.
This video retrospective features many creative minds and thought leaders: Stewart Brand, Jay Baldwin, Stephanie Mills, Lloyd Kahn, Ted Nelson, Doug Adams, Steven Levy, Andy Hertzfeld, Howard Rheingold, Jaron Lanier, Wavy Gravy, Kevin Kelly, Larry Harvey, Danny Hillis and Steve Jobs, in order of appearance.
Whole Earth Flashbacks was created by Fabrice Florin, with the help of over 60 community members…. Our video premiered at the 50th Anniversary of the Whole Earth Catalog on October 13, 2018, at Fort Mason in San Francisco.…”
https://vimeo.com/album/5479545/video/294878432
(In the 2nd row of the above collage, 2nd from left, is a fisheye shot of me in my dome at Pacific High School in 1968.)
nice!
$5.00 was a princely sum for me to invest in the first edition.
I got mine in 1972 at the local head shop, Edge City, in Jax, Fl. I was senior in high school and I read this far more than anything else. I then sought out books of interest listed in it. Suffice to say, beyond some sociology, theology or philosophy texts, most of these were not in the local library. This book opened my mind far more than anything else at the time. The effects of this opening, this ‘access to tools’ is still reverberating today. What it did for those of us away from the epicenter was to show that the constant underlying message we grew up with, that There Is No Alternative, was not just wrong philosophically, but demonstrably. It made people realize they could do for themselves. My father and I built the first house I ever owned and it was the direct result of the ideas embedded in that catalog.