I never grew up knowing the Whole Earth Catalog, but in the early '80s I was a precocious elementary school student who practically lived in any library I could get access to. My school library happened to have a copy of a particularly magical book that was loosely patterned after the WEC, the "Kids' Whole Future Catalog". https://paleofuture.com/blog/2007/4/27/the-kids-whole-future... I obsessively checked it out of…
I have a similar story about a set of books from the 80s that weren't as much as inspiration for me and the future, but instead became a major source of forming my own broad general knowledge on core topics: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia. Every week, at the local grocery store, a new volume would be available for purchase, covering a new subject area (Anatomy, Animals, Aircraft, Watercraft, Electricity, Space, Weather,…
This is one of the few areas where paper really wins. You get concentrated information in one physical object with hard boundaries which arrives on a regular slow schedule. You have plenty of time to read it thoroughly and start thinking and imagining.
The web is a constant hurricane of distractions. Wikipedia has far more information than any paper encyclopedia, and in a superficial sense it's far more accessible. But there's always more, and always something else. You firehose it, forget most it, and don't get the bigger picture or the implied narrative linking everything together.