Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

Although he was largely an observer of the technical community that created Silicon Valley, his various ideas and crusades around the Whole Earth Catalog, which he created in the fall of 1968, foreshadow and resonate with the techno-utopian culture that the Valley spawned.

A quixotic intellectual troubadour, he has prosecuted a series of discrete visions united only by a potent sense of curiosity and a provocative optimism.

A quixotic intellectual troubadour, he has prosecuted a series of discrete visions united only by a potent sense of curiosity and a provocative optimism.

he first figuratively and then literally set out to “play God,” initially by making the claim that humans had the power of gods and then during the past decade by creating an organization to save and restore endangered species with modern biotechnology.

It was a worldview that both resonated and broke with the New Left, for Brand rejected traditional politics and focused instead on what he called direct power—a focus on tools and skills for the individual—emerging from his early libertarian sympathies.

People who met him then described him as socially awkward, overly earnest, and cerebral.

People who met him then described him as socially awkward, overly earnest, and cerebral.

Steve Jobs fastened onto the Brand approach in recounting his own life in his influential 2005 Stanford commencement address. He found inspiration in the closing page of Brand’s Whole Earth Epilog. It captured the sensibility that emerged on the western edge of the continent during the sixties. The back cover of the 1974 edition of the publication

he first figuratively and then literally set out to “play God,” initially by making the claim that humans had the power of gods and then during the past decade by creating an organization to save and restore endangered species with modern biotechnology.

He went on to rethink modern architecture from a biological perspective and later publicly broke with the environmental movement over nuclear power and GMO food.