The Whole Earth Catalog, Where Counterculture Met Cyberculture | Hacker News Reader

The Whole Earth Catalog, Where Counterculture Met Cyberculture

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113 pointsconanxin19 comments

Good documentary about Steward Brand, the author of Whole Earth Catalog: https://www.weareasgods.film/

He also founded The Long Now. Come to a talk if you’re in SF — they’re great. https://longnow.org/ https://theinterval.org/

Looks interesting, but where can I actually watch this documentary?

Nothing on Vimeo, Youtube, Amazon, TPB/RARBG/XDCC, zero mention of any sources on their website. The site does not even carry a date of publication. (I mean, what are the basic infos one wants to have about films? Is it really so hard? ...)

They could've made the information more obvious, but there's some info in the comments on the trailer: https://vimeo.com/392233458#comment_18576653

I grew up immersed in the hacker ethos. It's hard for me to see myself clearly, with respect to the rest of society.

As a geek, I was bullied and beat up a lot. It's so weird to me that the geeks won. I can barely grasp it.

Historian Jill Lepore also has a very interesting take on Stewart Brand. How the counter culture technotopian's views came to dominate our society.

Lepore's insights compliment the views of Neil Postman (Technopoly), Ullman, Mara, and so many others. This article has a fair roundup as a starting point. https://lithub.com/understanding-the-pervasive-influence-of-...

Most interesting to me is when disconnected trends (cycles) overlap. Especially from 1980 thru 2010, the stretch where I became politically aware and activated.

There's always more to the story. The rejection of bureaucracy, experts, technocrats. How the middle class parted from the working class. How polling broke machine politics. How anxiety due to technological progress and "infoglut" (1980's term) begat a backlash. The economic transition from production to services, especially financialization and explosion of consumer debt. How "disintermediation" actually just replaced one set of gatekeepers with another. How "rebel" cultures are always coopted by entrenched interests.

Etc, ad nauseum.

Despite everything, I'm actually more optimistic every day.

Society will continue to convulse and spasm for some time. The rate of technological progress, so therefore the disruption to established power relationships, isn't slowing down any time soon.

But with every cycle, the cultural transmission of information improves. So humanity's capacity for self reflection, to learn from experience and each other, continues to improve.

Of course, the inevitable backlash and reactionary spaz attacks will suck. Yet somehow our children and grandchildren will pull thru.

If you want to read further, Fred Turner later published a book. (From Counterculture to Cyberculture https://g.co/kgs/Vrwazt)

I remember this book fondly, I was really into social sciences At highschool, but I decided to study Electronics and this was the book that really tied both topics. It's been eight years since and I'm still in engineering but on my free time read about history.

Interesting podcast with Fred Turner about his book on The Dig:

https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/counterculture-to-cyberc...

For those looking for more, if you haven't already read Steven Levy's Hackers, it is a great book about the start of the computer revolution. And I'd say Whole Earth (and other events before then) had clear influences on the show Halt and Catch Fire, a fun sort of "almost history" of some early startups.

The bulletin board in the 2nd season also echoed LucasArts “Habitat” which is discussed in length in Levy’s book

This is very opportune to see article about WEC on HN. Since the begining of the pandemic i faced many skeptics (commonly named complotists) looking to escape from our totalitarian society. But many werent so much able to understand the root cause, and where the paradigm of our modern technototalitarism where coming from.

WEC is a good synthesis of a spirit of an ERA. Back in the day it was full of hope that cybernetic/complex system/technologies/design would help mankind to live better.

WEC is the synthesis of this 1950 scientific mindset which sadly lead to mass cognitive regression, total destruction of rationality, mass technological hypnosis. Humans are not anymore humans, but are just kattles in a stall, designed and managed by a techno-structure called modernism. May be this was not their original dream, but this is what reality has done withit.

I still remember when my mom brought home a Whole Earth catalog in '71. Was a mind blow for 6 year old me. I think the next similar experience was when I plugged in my first Mac in '84.

The WEC had an amazing sub-story running in small boxes below the main pageset, I can't remember the details now, it was like Flann O'Brien who put an entire seconary plotline in the footnotes of the "dalkey archive" and/or the "third policeman"

This was a little continuing story, episodic, in 2-3 paragraphs per page, and then a hiatus, and then a bit more ..

There was also a lot of very odd folk wisdom. I remember one about curing warts by digging the living shit out of them with a swiss army knife.

This made me go pull my copy of The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971) off the shelf, haven't looked at it in decades. The small boxes you refer to all had a small illustration of a dragon-like creature (kind of like a crocodile) at the top, an icon of sorts to guide you to that text box. Not sure, but it may have had something to do with the story itself, as the last page in the catalog (over 400 large pages!) seems to have a conclusion with a much more elaborate illustration. FYI, it was named "Divine Right's Trip" by Gurney Norman.

Now I'll be spending some more hours re-visiting this treasure from my teenage years.

My copy is falling apart, but I remember it got me interested in geodesic domes. In 7th grade I built an 18' diameter by 9' high dome in my parents' front yard. Some strong winds destroyed it though, after I had skinned part of it with poly sheeting. Our across-the-street neighbor called the school to have them tell me and they let me go home early!

>I remember one about curing warts by digging the living shit out of them with a swiss army knife.

I've never read WEC but that actually works. It is very painful, of course, but I have personally done it with the only plantar wart I've ever had (at least, I assume that's what it was).

This was years ago but if memory serves it bled overnight, following day was tender to walk on, day after that I didn't even notice it. Checked a week or two later and it was gone.

Modern topical wart treatment is either liquid nitrogen freezing or use of salicylic acid with lactic acid in a rubbery base.

I believe they both do the same thing: change the (dead) skin layer enough to make the (live) skin layer slightly more aggressive fighting the wart virus. Eventually the mechanical shedding of the outside layer drives new skin production and your wart is shed, and fought by the body.

I was told to abrade my wart with a pumice stone. Probably digging at a wart with a knife does much the same thing.

Yes and:

I've done everything for plantar warts. During one stretch, I had so many it hurt to walk. (I'm immune compromised.)

Now I just apply a dab of wart compound (salicylic acid) and cover it with a bandage or electrical tape (which stays on longer). Eventually the wart goes away.

> ...drives new skin production and your wart is shed, and fought by the body

Probably.

My own theory is keeping the outer layer moist allows the immune system to (eventually) see the wart and then deal with it.

But I could believe that I'm accelerating the shedding of the outer layer. Thanks.

> pumice stone

TMI: I've long used a MicroPlaner. I'm told that day spas use a much less aggressive model. This model can bite a little bit into the living skin, so have a care. https://www.microplane.com/premium-classic-series-zester-gra...

Sounds like it was good because only smart people were showing up, or perhaps the fee applied the right kind of pressure to keep things engaging. I was wondering if it's time to start building forums that cost money ($100 a month?) to join. I don't know of any free communities that I would want to be part of.

There are a lot of communities that have patron only Discord channels/servers. Some implement this gatekeeping through proving ownership of a specific amount of a given crypto or a NFT. FWB and BAYC are examples.

https://www.fwb.help

https://boredapeyachtclub.com

"Stay hungry, stay foolish"

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