Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' Bio... Profile on TED.com. The WELL - the birthplace of the online community movement. The WELL. The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation.
As of June 2012, it had 2,693 members.[2] It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on the WELL range from deeply serious to trivial, depending on the nature and interests of the participants. History[edit] In August 2005 Salon Media Group announced that it was looking for a buyer for the WELL, in order to concentrate on other business lines. In November 2006, a press release of The WELL said, "As Salon has not found a suitable purchaser, it has determined that it is currently in the best interest of the company to retain this business and has therefore suspended all efforts to sell The WELL In June 2012 Salon once again announced that it was looking for a buyer for the WELL as its subscriber base "did not bear financial promise". Topics of discussion[edit] See also[edit]
Front Page. GBN Global Business Network. Whole Earth Catalog Stay Hungry Stay Foolish. The Whole Earth Catalog Effect. [Header = Intro] In the opening pages of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe describes “a thin blond guy with a blazing disk on his forehead,” wearing “just an Indian bead necklace on bare skin and a white butcher’s coat with medals from the King of Sweden on it.”
This guy is Stewart Brand, a Stanford-educated biologist and an ex–Army paratrooper turned Ken Kesey cohort and fellow merry prankster who, in 1966, at age 28, had launched a nationwide campaign to convince nasa to release for the first time a photo of the entire planet taken from space. (He made buttons reading “Why Haven’t We Seen a Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet?” And hitchhiked around the country selling them.) A few months after Wolfe’s book was published, in March 1968, Brand was flying back to California from his father’s funeral in Nebraska. The WEC lasted four years (along with some special editions since).
It is now 40 years later and the WEC’s avalanche of influence continues to flow. [Header = Who's who] Whole Earth Catalog. The first color image of Earth, a composite of images taken in 1967 by the ATS-3 satellite, was used as the cover image of Whole Earth Catalog's first edition.
The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, "do it yourself" (DIY), and holism, and featured the slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead, the vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. Origin[edit] The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project by Stewart Brand. J. Organization[edit] Stewart Brand. Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog.
He 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[edit] Brand attended Phillips Exeter Academy, before studying biology at Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1960. He was married to Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American and mathematician.[1] As a soldier in the U.S. American Indians[edit] Through scholarship and by visiting numerous Indian reservations, he familiarized himself with the Native Americans of the West. Merry Pranksters[edit] By the mid-1960s, he was associated with author Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and in San Francisco, with his partner Zach Stewart, Brand produced the Trips Festival, an early effort involving rock music and light shows.
Stewart Brand.