Stewart Brand (ed.): Whole Earth Catalog (1968-1998) & Whole Earth Software Catalog & Review (1984-1986)

The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds – things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle) the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items. This led to a need for the Catalogs to be frequently updated. (source)

The Whole Earth Software Catalog and The Whole Earth Software Review (1984-1985) were two publications produced by Stewart Brand’s Point Foundation as an extension of The Whole Earth Catalog.

The Catalog and Review were notable for being “devoid of any industry advertising” and for being “accessible and user friendly – written in an glib, conversational style that takes most of the bugs out of microprocessing.”

Fred Turner discusses the production and eventual demise of both the Catalog and Review in From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Turner notes that in 1983, The Whole Earth Software Catalog was proposed by John Brockman as a magazine which “would do for computing what the original [Whole Earth Catalog] had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged.”

Brand announced the first publication of the quarterly Whole Earth Software Review at the SoftCon trade show at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans in March 1984. While both were published as an extension of Whole Earth, the Catalog was a large glossy book sponsored by Doubleday and published in Sausalito California while the Review was a small periodical published in San Diego.

The Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review were both business failures. The Catalog was only published twice (1.0 in June and 2.0 in Fall ’85), with only three of The Whole Earth Software Review supplements published. (source)

Wikipedia (WEC)
Wikipedia (WESC & WESR)

Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1968
Whole Earth Catalog, Spring 1969 (added on 2016-8-24)
The Last Whole Earth Catalog, 1971 (79 MB, added on 2020-4-14)
The Essential Whole Earth Catalog, 1986 (126 MB, added on 2020-4-15)
Whole Earth Software Catalog 1.0, 1984 (updated on 2012-7-18)
View online (incl. other issues)
Electronic Whole Earth Catalog (CD-ROM on Internet Archive, added on 2020-7-16)

See also:
Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968-1974, online companion to 2011 exhibition at MoMA;
Index to the Internet Archive’s Whole Earth Collection, compiled by Robert Horvitz (added on 2018-8-18).

Benedict de Spinoza: A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works (1994)

“This anthology of the work of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) presents the text of Spinoza’s masterwork, the Ethics, in what is now the standard translation by Edwin Curley. Also included are selections from other works by Spinoza, chosen by Curley to make the Ethics easier to understand, and a substantial introduction that gives an overview of Spinoza’s life and the main themes of his philosophy. Perfect for course use, the Spinoza Reader is a practical tool with which to approach one of the world’s greatest but most difficult thinkers, a passionate seeker of the truth who has been viewed by some as an atheist and by others as a religious mystic.

The anthology begins with the opening section of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, which has always moved readers by its description of the young Spinoza’s spiritual quest, his dissatisfaction with the things people ordinarily strive for–wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure–and his hope that the pursuit of knowledge would lead him to discover the true good. The emphasis throughout these selections is on metaphysical, epistemological, and religious issues: the existence and nature of God, his relation to the world, the nature of the human mind and its relation to the body, and the theory of demonstration, axioms, and definitions. For each of these topics, the editor supplements the rigorous discussions in the Ethics with informal treatments from Spinoza’s other works.”

Edited and translated by Edwin M. Curley
Publisher Princeton University Press, 1994
ISBN 0691000670, 9780691000671
280 pages

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PDF (11 MB, updated on 2021-6-23)

#public_life: Digitale Intimität, die Privatsphäre und das Netz (2011) [German]

Immer mehr Menschen äußern sich im Internet nicht nur zu politischen Fragen, sondern auch zu ihrem Konsumverhalten oder ihren sexuellen Vorlieben, sie zeigen das Innere und Äußere ihrer Wohnung, lassen uns an den kleinen und großen Dingen ihres Lebens teilhaben. Gleichzeitig wird es durch die entsprechende Software immer leichter, Nutzerprofile zu erstellen, die den Menschen durchsichtig machen und marktförmig. So oder so: Die Grenzen zwischen dem Privaten und dem Öffentlichen verschwimmen, die Sphären durchdringen einander. Bleiben bei diesem Prozess die Persönlichkeitsrechte und das Politische auf der Strecke?

Die Beiträge im vorliegenden Sammelband #public_life untersuchen vor dem Hintergrund der digitalen Drift die Bedeutung von Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit heute. Die Gegensätzlichkeit der Positionen, die an Privatsphäre und Kontrollanspruch festhalten oder das Zeitalter von Post-Privacy ausrufen, scheuen sie dabei nicht.

Mit Beiträgen u. a. von Clive Thompson, Danah Boyd, Helen Nissenbaum, Daniel J. Solove, Malte Spitz, M. Ryan Calo, Francesca Schmidt, Jan Schallaböck und Michael Seemann.

Editor: Simon Edwin Dittrich
Publisher: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin, April 2011
Schriften zu Bildung und Kultur series, Nr. 8
ISBN 978-3-86928-052-3
128 pages
Licensed under Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE

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