Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984) | Hacker News Reader

Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984)

archive.org

114 pointsshrthnd44 comments

We lost something when the catalog was overtaken by the search engine. With a catalog you could aimlessly browse and passively learn a slice of what was possible and available in some space.

Of course a catalog is edited or curated which makes it biased but maybe more human editorial direction isn't such a bad thing in our current world of algorithmic optimized, SEO, echo chamber, click-bait choices.

Browse-ability allows non-focesed search and informs choices that are made at a later time from passive data gathering.

Search engines aren't exactly "un-biased," they're just biased in more obtuse and often-unintentional ways. The entire field of SEO exists to make it biased in your favor.

(That's not to say SEO goes away in a catalog world - it just starts looking like the old-fashioned human marketing still used for other channels that it currently sits alongside.)

Influencers sit in a curious place between the two worlds. An influencer is basically an independent (but paid and buy-able) "micro-catalog" maintainer who is themselves exposed through an algorithmic platform.

We still have the catalogs which you can aimlessly browse, but they are called differently: forums, reddit, HN

The late 70s and early 80s had lots of these kind of wonderful "collections of interesting stuff" in book form. I recall a number of books like this I used to check out of the library constantly that just seemed to ooze with a kind of energy of things and technology and people coming together in just such a way as to hint or suggest at a magnificent future humanity could emerge into. I wasn't the only one who checked these books out as they were all almost constantly checked out. One in particular was a clear offshoot I still remember today called "The Kid's Whole Future Catalog" by Paula Taylor...almost entirely forgotten today, but I managed to snag a copy off of ebay.

I wish we could switch timelines in the future outlined in it.

Stewart Brand (still alive) is the famous innovator of this sort of stuff, starting with the Whole Earth Catalog.

Wait, archive.org has scanned books?? I guess I'm only familiar with the archive's "Wayback Machine" -- I wasn't aware of their other offerings. This is interesting and has a pretty good interface for browsing. Even seems to use OCR to support search!

They’ve archived software, too.

Not just archived, but made probably hundreds of thousands of pieces of software playable...in your browser.

I've recently moved my support donations from wikipedia to archive.org after finding it out. Amazing content and the history of web deserves more

Wikipedia has more money than they can use; they still ask for donations even though they're more than relatively loaded with cash. I'd support the Internet Archive; as they're not really as over-grabby as "others." Every dollar you send to IA would buy them some hard drives or something; or whatever else they need. Internet Archive is the thing bros; Wikipedia is great and all but the Internet Archive is worth supporting with your dollars.

That isn't true, and the Wikimedia Foundation has made it extremely easy to look up: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_... . They use all there money and it's well spent.

Internet Archive is a great cause, too, and they are also well run https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943... Support them both.

They use all [their] money and it's well spent.

False.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

Revenue: $ 120,067,266

Expenses: $ 91,414,010

Is it possible that some of that difference is due to amortization of hardware and other assets? I'm not a finance person, but I thought that those sorts of expenses show up incrementally on the books over the course of the amortization period even though they're typically paid for up front... (?)

"They use all the money" Yes, exactly why you should move your money to internet archive. Despite earning more than ever and providing relatively the same service wikipedia still 'use up' your money and ask for more in the form of an obtrusive banner. Therefore you can see that it's probaly not "well spent" see an agregate link below of wikipedia critics explaining and sourcing this.

http://xahlee.info/w/do_not_donate_to_Wikipedia.html

I'm not pro-Wikimedia here (see other comment), but you're not being fair exactly; I'd go as far as to say your comment is wrong in everything except that the banner is obtrusive and that your funds would be better directed at the IA.

The scale and scope of Wikimedia has been constantly expanding, and outside of a few terrible bets, it's generally been for the better. It hasn't been recklessly overspending and it's definitely not "providing relatively the same service."

A year ago I read a very well written article linked trough HN that broke down wikipedia's total est traffic and active data and made several cost analysis that aired on the side of caution. It didn't match wikimedia's allocation at all. However I cannot for the life of me find the article on ddg or google. It comes down to this, Wikipedia being mostly text based means that the size of their library isn't as big as you'd think. Compressed, their english articles amount to 16GB. You can download the entire thing on your laptop and see for yourself, its all there. even adding all history and languages on top, you're not exactly reaching petabytes just yet. most of their costs come from traffic. but the website is still text. I tried finding good bandwidth estimates but dont have time. I want to give wikipedia the benefit of doubt but they are just wastefull.

Last point I want to make, Internet Archive has a complete copy of wikipedia. ( though not fully up to date ofc)

if wikipedia fails due to incompetence or bad leadership, Internet archive will be first in line to pick up the hot potato of the approximate human knowledge register.

https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_c...

Links to help yo on your way https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics

None of this is novel information, and "it's literally just a wiki!" isn't in any way actually true and is incredibly reductive. Along with everything else, you're not even including images.

Of course their banners always seem to be about "supporting Wikipedia" that's "surviving on donations" and needs to "protect its independence", not about supporting a "constantly expanding scope" of projects Wikimedia would like to do, and thus asks for more money each year. And for most people, the visible service provided is the same: Wikipedia. Not the grants they give out, not the lobbying they do, ...

Glad you owned up and shit or whatever. I didn't come in here to knock on Wiki, but, they just get too much money, despite times moving forward and all. Throw some money on the Internet Archive; they always need more drives for their servers. They should set up a duplicate rack, of drives, that would be the project I'd donate to. 2x Internet Archive should be the norm. Utah? Midwest? It'd be good to have a 100%, 200% as such, setup of the Internet Archive. All funded of course. Hawaii would be an option, I doubt the humidity and shit would be the best though. Probably power costs too. A doublet of Internet Archive in Utah or whereever would be fun. Or even in Europe. Africa could be a candidate too.

I wish they were more truthful in their fundraising. "We are sustained by donations", "keep wikipedia thriving for years" all evoke the image of needing money to keep lights on and to keep the website functional. In practice, at least 34% goes to things unrelated to website ("communities" in [0]).

[0] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual-report/fin...

I've donated in the past, but with the recent copyright debacle, I'm less inclined to—not so much because I think they're clearly on the wrong side of the law (though I do believe so), but more because it seems like such an obvious and potentially catastrophic misjudgment. I'm fine with information activism, even if I'm not totally on board with the full program, but not at the expense of endangering the core mission. I don't think their actions will yield a valuable test case, so I'd prefer to see them instead work towards copyright reform in a more measured manner. I'll probably continue to support them because it's such an amazing resource and so many people are doing great work, but the leadership does not, at this time, have my confidence.

What recent copyright debacle?

Claiming they are library, they launched "National Emergency Library" initiative which made 1.4M works (of which some are copyrighted) freely available online worldwide. They have ended the program since.

http://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/

I guess you haven't been following that whole legal saga during COVID where Archive was letting people check out digital library books?

You know how back in the 90s you used to get those CD-ROMs of games in cereal boxes you bought, or the AOL installation discs you'd use as cup coasters? Or just about any freeware CD-ROM from the 90s that you might have come across, period?

Archive has all that, and more.

Archive.org has so many scanned books that they're being sued by publishers calling it a pirate site. The EFF legal team is getting involved to defend the lawsuit.

Welcome to an entire universe of amazing material. The Internet Archive is a shining jewel of the Internet and the Wayback Machine may be one of the least interesting of their projects.

They have tens of millions of scanned books available, some millions of which they have scanned themselves. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1244760075828428801

They have a huge amount of music available, some of which they worked with George Blood company to rip from 78 RPM shellac records. http://great78.archive.org/preservation/

archive.org has most historical Byte magazines scanned, which are great fun to read.

Books, magazines, software, equipment manuals, even audio stuff.

Don't go there. I won't be responsible for the months you spend in there, getting stuff like the August 1978 issue of BYTE, or Sophie Tucker singing songs from the 1920s.

Stewart Brand has done lots of good stuff. My favorite is the 6 part BBC series on "How Buildings Learn". It really opened my eyes to the importance of buildings. Very relevant to the frequent discussions here about zoning, design, etc. But also just an amazing, clear, well-informed amateur analysis of how the US has been doing in this field over the last 100 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0

The book that inspired the series is also great.

How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn

One thing that I find absolutely bonkers, is that the Whole Earth Catalogue website, http://www.wholeearth.com is broken and nothing has been done to fix it.

Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities by Kevin Kelly

https://www.amazon.com/Cool-Tools-Possibilities-Kevin-Kelly/...

is a worthy successor to Whole Earth Catalog in both content and spirit.

Amazed to see AutoCad is in there along with 3D applications for visualisation.

I did not think there was much in the way of 3D software available on PCs at such an early time. I thought workstations ruled the roost in those early days when it came to 3D.

Is it just my phone, or is this completely illegible? Much of the text is tiny dithered garbage, and pinch zooming just makes the document window turn black.

I wish they would use plain HTML or a PDF.

It is HTML. And the scanned documents on the Archive can be downloaded as PDF usually (among other formats).

It's a bad black and white (or very few tone) scan. Really too bad that the titles of the items are unreadable!

It's your phone. There's a zoom function. This is a very large book and a larger screen than a phone is needed.

Page 16, from a review of the "Disposable" Commodore 64: "It works great, but it's not destined to become a family heirloom"

No computers of that era (or any era) are going to be heirlooms. The C64 shipped with a power supply that failed often and in a way that fried the computer.

https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...

Page 34 Three Mile Island SCRAM simulator.. side-by-site with Flight Simulator

Perhaps also of interest to HN - the hypercard version of the Catalog! https://archive.org/details/the-electronic-whole-earth-catal...

Related discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23754441

Reply on news.ycombinator.com