Stewart Brand

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Stewart Brand
close-up of Stewart Brand wearing a dark blue shirt, holding his glasses up slightly above his eyes, smiling and looking left of camera
Brand in 2020
Born (1938-12-14) December 14, 1938 (age 85)
Rockford, Illinois, United States
Alma materStanford University
Occupations
  • Writer
  • editor
  • entrepreneur
Known forWhole Earth Catalog
The WELL
Long Now Foundation
Spouse(s)Lois Jennings (1966–1973)
Ryan Phelan (1983–present)[1]
Websitesb.longnow.org

Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

Life

Brand was born in

Ottawa Native American.[5]

Brand has lived in California since the 1960s. He and his second wife live on Mirene, a 64-foot (20 m)-long working tugboat. Built in 1912, the boat is moored in a former shipyard in Sausalito, California.[6] He works in Mary Heartline, a grounded fishing boat about 100 yards (90 metres) away.[6] One of his favorite items is a table on which Otis Redding is said to have written "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" (Brand acquired it from an antiques dealer in Sausalito).[6]

USCO and Merry Pranksters

By the mid-1960s, Brand became associated with New York multimedia group

hippies attended, and Haight-Ashbury soon emerged as the epicenter of an emerging counterculture, with the Summer of Love in 1967.[7] Tom Wolfe includes Brand in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.[8]

NASA images of Earth

Earth from space, by ATS-3 satellite, 1967
Earthrise, by William Anders, Apollo 8, 1968
See also: The Blue Marble

In 1966, while on an

Bill Anders took an Earth photo,[12] Earthrise, from Moon orbit, which became the front image of the spring 1969 edition of the Catalog. 1970 saw the first celebration of Earth Day.[11]
During a 2003 interview, Brand explained that the image "gave the sense that Earth's an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it's so graphic, this little blue, white, green and brown jewel-like icon amongst a quite featureless black vacuum."

Douglas Engelbart

In late 1968, Brand assisted electrical engineer

Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.[15][16]

Brand surmised that given the necessary consciousness, information, and tools, human beings could reshape the world they had made (and were making) for themselves into something environmentally and socially sustainable.[17]: 42 

Whole Earth Catalog

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, about 10 million Americans were involved in living

masons' tools, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers, and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" (written in the form of a letter to a friend) of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The information also described where these things could be located or purchased. The Catalog's publication coincided with the great wave of social and cultural experimentation, convention-breaking, and "do it yourself" attitude associated with the "counterculture
".

The Whole Earth Catalog had widespread influence within the rural back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the communities movement within many cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. The 1972 edition sold 1.5 million copies, winning the first U.S. National Book Award in the Contemporary Affairs category.[19]

Steve Jobs ended his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University by acknowledging both Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog, quoting its farewell message: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish".[20][21]

CoEvolution Quarterly

To continue this work and also to publish full-length articles on specific topics in the natural sciences and invention, in numerous areas of the arts and the

social sciences, and on the contemporary scene in general, Brand founded CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974, aimed primarily at educated laypeople.[22] Brand never better revealed his opinions and reason for hope than when he ran, in CoEvolution Quarterly #4, a transcription of technology historian Lewis Mumford's talk "The Next Transformation of Man", in which he stated that "man has still within him sufficient resources to alter the direction of modern civilization, for we then need no longer regard man as the passive victim of his own irreversible technological development".[23]

The content of CoEvolution Quarterly often included

Eric Drexler, Gerard K. O'Neill, Peter Calthorpe, Sim Van der Ryn, Paul Hawken, John Todd, Kevin Kelly, and Donella Meadows. In the ensuing years, Brand authored and edited a number of books on topics as diverse as computer-based media, the life history of buildings, and ideas about space colonies
.

He founded the Whole Earth Software Review, a supplement to the Whole Earth Software Catalog, in 1984. It merged with CoEvolution Quarterly to form the Whole Earth Review in 1985.[24]

California government

From 1977 to 1979, Brand served as "special advisor" to the administration of California Governor Jerry Brown.[25][26]

The WELL

In 1985, Brand and Larry Brilliant founded the WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link"), a prototypical, wide-ranging online community for informed participants the world over.[27] The WELL won the 1990 Best Online Publication Award from the Computer Press Association.[28]

All Species Foundation

In 2000, Brand helped launch the All Species Foundation,[29][30] which aimed to catalog all species of life on Earth.[31] The project ceased functioning in 2007, transferring its mission to the Encyclopedia of Life.[29]

Global Business Network

Brand speaking at the Frontiers Conference, 2010
Brand in 2020

During 1986, Brand was a visiting scientist at the

multidisciplinary
scientific research community pursuing frontier science". He has also continued to promote the preservation of tracts of wilderness.

Whole Earth Discipline

The Whole Earth Catalog implied an ideal of human

genetically modified organisms as technologies with more promise than risk.[33]

Brand later developed these ideas into a book and published

global warming.[34]

In a 2019 interview, Brand described his perspective as "post-libertarian", indicating that at the time when the Whole Earth Catalog was being written, he did not fully understand the significance of the role of government in the development of technology and engineering.[33] In his environmental position, he self-describes as an "eco-pragmatist".[35]

Long Now Foundation

Brand is co‑chair and president of the board of directors of the

Seminars About Long-term Thinking. This series on long-term thinking has presented a range of speakers, including Brian Eno, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, Philip Rosedale, Jimmy Wales, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, Ray Kurzweil, Bruce Sterling, and Cory Doctorow
.

Brand is the subject of the 2021 documentary film We Are As Gods.[36]

Works

Stewart Brand is the initiator or was involved with the development of the following:

Publications

Books

As editor or co-editor

See also

References

  • Phil Garlington, "Stewart Brand", Outside magazine, December 1977.
  • Sam Martin and Matt Scanlon, "The Long Now: An Interview with Stewart Brand", Mother Earth News magazine, January 2001
  • "Stewart Brand" (c.v., last updated September 2006)[40]
  • Massive Change Radio interview with Stewart Brand, November 2003[41]
  • Whole Earth Catalog, various issues, 1968–1998.
  • CoEvolution Quarterly (in the 1980s, renamed Whole Earth Review, later just Whole Earth), various issues, 1974–2002.
  1. ^ "Bio..." Retrieved May 20, 2014.
  2. ^ "Brand (Stewart) papers – Online Archive of California". Online Archive of California.
  3. ^ Stewart Brand. "Big Think Interview with Stewart Brand – Big Think". Big Think.
  4. ^ Markoff, John 2022 Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. New York:Penguin, pp. 77–79
  5. ^ Brand 2009, p. 236
  6. ^ a b c Lewine, Edward (April 19, 2009). "On the Waterfront". The New York Times. Retrieved November 2, 2009.
  7. ^ Brand, Stewart. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: The Legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog. Stanford University Libraries via Google. Event occurs at 32:30. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  8. ^ Wolfe, T., The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), pp. 363 ff.
  9. ^ "Lunch with the FT: Stewart Brand". www.ft.com. Archived from the original on December 10, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  10. ^ "The Guardian Profile: Stewart Brand". The Guardian. August 3, 2001. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  11. ^ a b Brand, Stewart. "Photography changes our relationship to our planet". Smithsonian Photography Initiative. Archived from the original on May 30, 2008. Retrieved November 6, 2009.
  12. ^ a b Brand 2009, p. 214
  13. ^ Leonard, Jennifer. "Stewart Brand on the long view". Archived from the original on December 12, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
  14. ^ "The front cover of the Fall 1968 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog showing the AST-3 image of 10 November 1967".
  15. ^ Fisher, Adam (December 9, 2018). "How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos". Wired. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
  16. OCLC 1057306457.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  17. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7006-1545-2
    .
  18. OCLC 62533774
    .
  19. ^ "National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 9, 2012.
    There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.
  20. ^ "'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says". Stanford University. June 14, 2005. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  21. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address". Stanford University. 2009. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  22. ISBN 978-0-7006-1821-7
    .
  23. ^ Mumford, Lewis "Enough Energy for Life & the Next Transformation of Man" CoEvolution Quarterly issue 4, 1974-12-21, pp 19–23.
  24. ^ Turner, Fred (2008). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 129–130.
  25. ^ "Governor of California, BallotPedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Jerry_Brown_(California)
  26. ^ Markoff, John 2022 Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. New York:Penguin
  27. OCLC 62533774
    .
  28. ISBN 0-7867-0846-8
  29. ^ a b Kelly, Kevin. "Biography". Kevin Kelly. Archived from the original on May 18, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  30. ^ Hitt, Jack (December 9, 2001). "The year in ideas: A to Z; The All-Species Inventory". The New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  31. ^ "A Call for the Discovery of All Life-Forms on Earth". All Species Foundation. Archived from the original on February 2, 2007. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  32. ^ "Environmental Heresies". MIT Technology Review.
  33. ^
    ISSN 0028-792X
    . Retrieved May 18, 2019.
  34. ISBN 978-0-670-02121-5
    .
  35. ^ Sabin, Paul (March 25, 2022). "Stewart Brand's Long, Strange Trip". The New York Times.
  36. ^ Marsh, Calum (September 6, 2022). "We Are as Gods review: Turn On, Tune in, Drop Out". The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  37. ^ "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
  38. ^ Eduardo Porter (April 14, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". The New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2015. On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the "Eco-modernist Manifesto."
  39. ^ "Authors an Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.
  40. ^ "Bio". sb.longnow.org.
  41. ^ PDF Archived May 18, 2005, at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stewart Brand.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Stewart Brand.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stewart_Brand&oldid=1217839974"